Ottoman Sufism, Orientalism, and German Politics, 1770-1825 a Dissertatio

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

Changing States:

Ottoman Sufism, Orientalism, and German Politics,

1770-1825

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

in History

Lela Jaise Gibson

2015

Lela Jaise Gibson

2015

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Changing States:

Ottoman Sufism, Orientalism, and German Politics,

1770-1825

Lela Jaise Gibson

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Los Angeles, 2015

Professor David Sabean, Chair

This dissertation shows how German diplomats imported texts related to tasawwuf (Sufism) from the Ottoman Empire, translated them into German, and published them to advocate for competing political visions following the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Specifically, it traces the life of Heinrich von Diez (1751-1817), an Enlightenment thinker who served as the

Prussian chargé d’affaires in Istanbul from 1784-90, where he learned Ottoman, collected manuscripts, and established contact with a Sufi lodge. After returning to Prussia, he translated and published several Ottoman manuscripts to articulate his support for an absolutist revival.

Habsburg diplomats in Istanbul, such as Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856), Valentin von Huszár (1788-1850), and Vincenz von Rosenzweig-Schwannau (1791-1865), similarly established contact with Sufi lodges, imported manuscripts, and translated them into German to advocate for a competing vision of the future rooted in nationalism and romantic poetry. Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) drew upon the work of these diplomat-orientalists to write the West-östlicher Divan (1819), a collection poems inspired by Sufi literature. Theologian and orientalist August Tholuck (1799-1877) also built upon the work of these authors to advance his approach to evangelical theology. This dissertation shows how these thinkers appropriated Sufi texts to formulate and articulate their political visions for the future of the German-speaking world at the beginning of the modern era, locating discussions about nationalism, literature, and philosophy within a larger context of exchange between Europe and the Islamic world.

iii

The dissertation of Lela Jaise Gibson is approved.

Nile Spencer Green

Lynn A. Hunt

Gabriel Piterberg

Saree Makdisi

David Sabean, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles

2015

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Curriculum Vita ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Heinrich Diez and the German Enlightenment ...... 13

Chapter 2: Sufism and European Diplomacy in Istanbul ...... 47

Chapter 3: Ottoman Sufism and Prussian Conservatism ...... 72

Chapter 4: Romantic Nationalism and Sufi Poetry in Vienna ...... 96

Chapter 5: Dueling Futures, Dueling Orientalisms ...... 122

Chapter 6: Sufism and Orientalism in Weimar ...... 146

Chapter 7: Sufism and Evangelical Christianity ...... 161

Conclusion ...... 171

Bibliography ...... 175

Acknowledgements

It has been a privilege to work with an outstanding group of scholars at UCLA. Thank you to David Sabean, Lynn Hunt, Nile Green, Gabriel Piterberg, and Saree Makdisi for their insightful advice and commitment to this project. Thank you also to Peter Park, Kris Pangburn,

Baki Tezcan, and Fariba Zarinebaf for their helpful comments. It has been a pleasure to be part of an international group of young scholars documenting the history of Ottoman-European exchange: to Irena Fliter, Pascal Firges, Emrah Safa Gürkan, Emily Neumeier, Will Smiley, and

Michael Talbot, thank you. Much appreciation also to my teachers of Ottoman Turkish: Hasan

Aksoy, Mehmet Taha Ayar, Güliz Kuruoğlu, and Sevim Yılmaz Önder. Warm thanks to the many others who provided comments, insight and support for this project.

The idea for this dissertation began many years ago and developed in the course of my undergraduate and graduate studies. Thank you to Stephen Brockmann and Kiron Skinner at

Carnegie Mellon University for providing the necessary foundation in German literature and international politics. Several scholars at Georgetown University read and commented on early versions of this project: thank you to Bassam Haddad, Katrin Sieg, Faruk Tabak, and John Voll.

Of course, any errors in the text are the responsbility of the author alone.

Thank you also to the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, Deutscher Akademischer

Austauschdienst (DAAD), UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, and UCLA

Department of History for providing grants for archival research.

Finally, thank you to my parents John and Carole Gibson for their love and support.

Curriculum Vita

Lela Gibson

Education Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles M.A., History, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2010 M.A., German and European Studies, Georgetown University, 2007 B.A., German and International Relations, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005

Publications “Diplomats and Ottoman-European Intellectual Exchange: Heinrich von Diez and Ali Aziz Efendi, 1797” Journal of Ottoman Studies (forthcoming, 2016) “Turkish-German Studies and the Ottoman Empire.” In Turkish-German Studies: Past, Present, and Future, edited by Ela Gezen and Berna Gueneli (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming 2015). Book Review of John-Paul Ghobrial, The Whispers of Cities: Information Flows in Istanbul, London and Paris in the Age of William Trumbull (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), The Historian, (forthcoming) “A European Jewish Feminist Decries the White Slave Trade in the Ottoman Empire.” In Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950, edited by Julia Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (Stanford University Press, 2014), 226-231. (Translation) “The Ottoman Empire, Islam and the Emergence of German National Identity, 1789-1815.” In Religion, Identity and Politics: Germany and Turkey in Interaction, edited by Haldun Gülalp and Günter Seufert (New York: Routledge, 2013), 9-18.

Grants Henry J. Bruman Endowed Chair/Department of History Dissertation Fellowship, Summer and Fall 2015 Henry J. Bruman Endowed Chair/Department of History Dissertation Year Fellowship, 2014-15 Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA Graduate Division, 2013-14 Summer Dissertation Fellowship, UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, 2013 Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant, UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, Summer 2012 Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant, UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies, 2011-12 Graduate Research Mentorship, UCLA Graduate Division, 2010-11 Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, Summer 2010 DAAD German Studies Research Grant, 2010 Berkeley-Vienna Fund Research Grant, Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation, 2010

Selected Presentations

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“The Galata Mevlevihanesi: Ottoman Sufism and the European Enlightenment,” Ottoman Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015

“Turkish-German Studies and the Ottoman Empire,” German Studies Association, Kansas City, 2014 “Diplomats as Philosophers: Heinrich von Diez and Ali Aziz Efendi, 1797,” Contacts, Encounters, Practices: European-Ottoman Diplomacy Roundtable, 1500-1800, University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom, June 2014 “Towards Global Intellectual History: Ottoman Elites and the German Enlightenment, 1773- 1817,” German Studies Association, Denver, 2013 “Ottoman Diplomats in Habsburg and Prussian Enlightenment Society, 1791-98,” Middle East Studies Association, New Orleans, 2013 “Ottoman Sufism and the Prussian Enlightenment: Heinrich von Diez, 1751–1817,” Moralism, Fundamentalism, and the Rhetoric of Decline in Eurasia, 1600-1900, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, 2013 “An Ottoman Diplomat in Berlin: Ahmed Azmi Efendi, 1791-92,” German Studies Association, Louisville, 2011 “Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange: Ebubekir Ratib Efendi’s Mission to Vienna, 1792, Ottoman-European Exchanges in Commerce, Finance, and Culture, Newnham College, Cambridge University, United Kingdom, 2011 “Dueling Orientalisms: Prussian and Habsburg Scholarship on the Near East, 1790-1819” German Studies Association, Oakland, 2010

Teaching University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Germanic Languages The Holocaust in Film and Literature, Teaching Fellow, 2015 History of German Philosophy, Teaching Fellow, 2012, 2014

University of California, Los Angeles, Department of History Western Civilization, 1715-present (online), Teaching Associate, 2013, 2014 World History to 600 AD, Teaching Associate, 2013 World History, 600-1750 AD, Teaching Associate, 2013 Western Civilization, 800-1715 AD, Teaching Assistant, 2010 Western Civilization to 800 AD, Teaching Assistant, 2009 The Third Reich and Jews, 1939-1945, Reader, 2009, 2010 History of Modern Iran, 1500-Present, Reader, 2008

Languages English (fluent) German (fluent) Modern Turkish (advanced) Ottoman (reading)

viii

Note:

German words have been transcribed according to original spellings (i.e. Vortheile rather than

Vorteile). Transliteration of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words follows the approach of the

International Journal for Middle East Studies. Ottoman Turkish words have been rendered in modern Turkish orthography. Commonly used English and modern Turkish terms have been preferred over transliteration where available. All dates are AD unless otherwise noted.

Introduction

Hegire Hegira Nord und West und Süd zersplittern North and South and West – they shake! Throne bersten, Reiche zittern, Thrones are cracking, empires quake, Flüchte du, im reinen Osten To the purer East, then, fly Patriarchenluft zu kosten: Patriarchal air to try: Unter Lieben, Trinken, Singen, Loving, drinking songs among, Soll dich Chisers Quell verjüngen.1 Khizer’s rill will make you young.2 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1819

Germany’s national poet Goethe (1749-1832) penned these lines a year after the monumental Battle of Leipzig in 1813, Europe’s largest battle previous to World War I, in which

600,000 soldiers defeated French troops occupying the German-speaking world since the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1802. Napoleon’s damage to absolutist order in the

German-speaking world, then divided into princely kingdoms and duchies, was irreversible, and influential thinkers such as Goethe envisioned new possibilities for political order. In the midst of the “cracking thrones” and “quaking empires” described in Goethe’s poem, German thinkers

“fled” to texts from the Near East to support approaches to regeneration and regrowth of the

German-speaking world following Napoleonic destruction. They drew from “Khidr’s rill,” an allusion to tasawwuf, commonly known as Sufism or Islamic mysticism, whose source was in

Istanbul, where German-speaking diplomats gathered philosophical texts from Ottoman Sufi lodges and translated them into German, ultimately engaging in a competition over how to build a future based upon this knowledge.

1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-östlicher Divan (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1819), 3.

2Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-East Divan: Poems, with “Notes and Essays”: Goethe’s Intercultural Dialogues, trans. Martin Bidney (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 1. Original transliterations in his translation have been retained. Khidr (spelled “Khizer” in Bidney’s translation) is the patron saint of Sufis.

This dissertation shows how early nineteenth-century thinkers drew from texts related to tasawwuf, imported from the Ottoman Empire, to imagine and articulate competing visions of the future in the German-speaking world. It traces key points in the life of Prussian chargé d’affaires to the Ottoman Empire from 1784-91 and orientalist Heinrich von Diez (1751-1817), who associated with a Sufi lodge, the Galata Mevlevihanesi, and collected Ottoman manuscripts in Istanbul, later translating them into German to express his conservative vision of a revived absolutist order. It also examines how other German-speaking diplomats in Istanbul, including diplomats Joseph von Hammer (1774-1856), Valentin von Huszár (1788-1850), and Vincenz von

Rosenzweig (1791-1865), similarly established contact with Sufi lodges and imported and translated manuscripts to support a competing vision of the future rooted in nationalism and the power of language to unite the German-speaking world. Other thinkers, such as Goethe and the evangelical theologian August Tholuck (1799-1877), drew upon these diplomat-orientalists’ work to express their own political and religious views. A study of these figures demonstrates how they appropriated Sufi texts to formulate and articulate their own visions of a German future.

Erich Auerbach’s concept of an Ansatzpunkt, or point of departure, informs the methodology of this study. Auerbach conceived an Ansatzpunkt as “a handle, as it were, by which the subject can be seized” which is a “firmly circumscribed, easily comprehensible set of phenomena whose interpretation is a radiation out from them and which orders and interprets a greater region than they themselves occupy.”3 This technique provides structure for approaching an exceedingly large subject matter, such as world literature (Weltliteratur), than is humanly

3 Erich Auerbach, “Philology and Weltliteratur,” trans. Maire Said and Edward Said, The Centennial Review XIII, no. 1 (1969): 14. Originally published in Walter Muschg and Emil Staiger, Weltliteratur; Festgabe für Fritz Strich zum 70. Geburtstag (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1952).

possible to explore through a synthesis of all available materials. Carlo Ginzburg’s understanding of microhistory, which he describes as “narrowing the scope of our inquiry” in an attempt for richer understanding, draws upon Auerbach’s idea of the Ansatzpunkt to focus upon one person, location, or text as a means to understand larger theories and historical developments.4 The present study is not a microhistory, since it draws from various sources and neither aims to achieve a detailed biography of one figure (i.e. Diez) nor attempts to understand larger theories through a single-focus study of his life. Rather, it employs Auerbach’s original conception of an Ansatzpunkt to study select parts of Diez’s life as an organizing principle for an inquiry that reveals the connections between European diplomacy in Istanbul, German politics, and tasawwuf.

Creating the Sonderweg: A German Nation Built on Eastern Texts

In his highly influential work Orientalism, Edward Said originally identified three meanings of what he termed “orientalism:” 1) an academic field of study; 2) a “style of thought” which distinguishes between the two categories of “Orient” and “Occident”; 3) a discourse “as a

Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.”5 Said argued that intellectual history, especially as it pertains to Europe and the Near East, must be studied in its political context, writing, “ideas, cultures and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.”6

His approach to examining texts related to the European study of the Near East within their

4 Carlo Ginzburg, “Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: An Experiment in Microhistory,” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 3 (2005): 665. For an historiography of microhistory, see Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive (University of California Press, 2012), 193–214.

5 Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th Anniversary Edition (New York: Random House, 2003), 2– 3.

6 Ibid., 5.

greater political context informs this study, which also contextualizes knowledge production within a larger sphere of European imperial rivalry.

The last twenty years have seen a proliferation of research on German orientalism, most notably due to the postcolonial turn. The original impetus for the growth in the field, according to Robert Cowan, was “the notion that Germany, which, unlike England and France, came to colonialism late and in a smaller way, did not share with its European neighbors the same kind of exoticizing power dynamics.”7 This notion stemmed from the Sonderweg thesis, which argued that Germany’s path to modernization differed from other European states due late unification, industrialization, and colonialism.8 Said reinforced this notion by arguing that Germany’s late participation in colonialism informed its relationship to orientalism, writing “at no time in

German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century could a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted, sustained national interest in the Orient.” 9 Instead, he argued, “the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies and even novels, but it was never actual…”10

Recent research has addressed Said’s thesis that the German-speaking world did not have a national interest in the Middle East by arguing that German orientalism was tied to the rise of

German nationalism rather than overseas expansion. Todd Kontje, for example, argued that “the

7 Robert Cowan, The Indo-German Identification: Reconciling South Asian Origins and European Destinies, 1765-1885 (Camden House, 2010), 1.

8 For an overview of this debate, see Jürgen Kocka, “German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 1 (1988): 3–16.

9 Said, 19.

10 Said, 19.

very lack of a unified nation-state and the absence of empire contributed to the development of a peculiarly German Orientalism. German writers oscillated between identifying their country with the rest of Europe against the Orient and allying themselves with selected parts of the East against the West.”11 German identification with Eastern cultures was especially evident in the field of philology, as Tuska Benes shows, where some thinkers sought connections to the East on the basis of linguistic association tracing back to ideas of an “Ursprache” or original language.12

Three recent books have focused on the link between nationalism and German

Indology.13 Doug McGetchin, for example, identified how German interest in India was a response to the Napoleonic wars, writing “Germans used India to reject French nationalism and

Napoleonic invasion by discovering their own historical and linguistic roots. Germans wanted to remove themselves from French cultural influence, and they turned for inspiration to ancient

India, a society they believed could rival the splendor of France’s classical Roman heritage.”14

Robert Cowan similarly showed how the German study of Sanskrit texts was based on attempt to

“establish a set of German national origins that were independent of the Greco-Roman and

Judeo-Christian traditions.”15 Nicholas Germana argued that German thinkers during the

Napoleonic Wars looked towards India as an example of a great nation similar to what they

11 Todd Curtis Kontje, German Orientalisms (University of Michigan Press, 2004), 2.

12 Tuska Benes, In Babel’s Shadow: Language, Philology, and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008).

13 Cowan, The Indo-German Identification; Nicholas Germana, The Orient of Europe: The Mythical Image of India and Competing Images of German National Identity (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009); Douglas T. McGetchin, Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India’s Rebirth in Modern Germany (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009).

14 McGetchin, Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism, 21.

15 Cowan, The Indo-German Identification, 2.

aspired for in the German-speaking world.16 The turn towards India offered German thinkers a way to define themselves against France in a time of emerging German national identity based on what they viewed as a linguistic connection to the East.

This work builds upon previous studies of German orientalism in two ways. First, it shows a similar dynamic in terms of nationalism in German translations of tasawwuf-related literature as those described in secondary literature about German Indology during this period.

That is, it agrees with the recent literature tying German orientalism to nationalism and widens the field of research beyond the field of Indology to include German study of Sufi texts. It similarly identifies the Napoleonic period as a crucial era for the simultaneous rise in modern

German orientalism alongside German nationalism.

Second, and more importantly, it demonstrates a material link between orientalism and

German politics by tracing the specific mechanisms of exchange to show that, contra to accepted assumptions, German orientalism was tied to a national, and colonial, interest in the Near East.

Although German imperialism is usually considered a late nineteenth-century phenomenon, a study of Diez’s era reveals Prussian-Ottoman relations as part of a larger system of European rivalry. Prussia’s engagement with the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century could, as

Niles Illich argues, be considered what Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher defined as informal empire due to its interest in diplomatic and trade agreements within a larger system of competing

European rivalries.17 As Chapter 2 shows, German-speaking states had an imperial interest in the

Middle East, especially towards the end of the eighteenth century when European powers began to debate what became known as the Eastern Question. The figure of Diez, who negotiated an

16 Germana, The Orient of Europe.

17 Niles Stefan Illich, “German Imperialism in the Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Study” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2007), 30.

alliance treaty with the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul and later became in influential orientalist, embodies the direct connection between German overseas interests and orientalism. Perhaps even more surprisingly, it also shows a link between European imperial rivalry, diplomacy, and tasawwuf.

Tasawwuf as Sufism: German Orientalism and the Origins of Sufi Studies

The term “Sufism” originated in early nineteenth-century orientalism as an overarching term for various beliefs and practices throughout the Islamic world also described as “Islamic mysticism.”18 The term “Sufism” itself has recently been the subject of much debate; Carl Ernst noted, for example, “the multiple forms of activity actually practiced by Muslim mystics all had distinct names and terminologies.”19 As Talal Asad argued, the idea of religious practice as a sphere of human activity separate from others such as politics, science, and law originates in late eighteenth-century European thought.20 The notion of Sufism as a category of Islam draws from this approach to religion. Carl Ernst, for example, wrote that before the nineteenth century, “the multifarious activities that we subsume under the terms Sufism and Islam were not spheres of existence separate or separable from religious life in general.”21 During this time, the term “Sufi” was one of many used to denote those engaged with various practices, usually connected to a

18 For an overview of the history of Sufi studies, see Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh, “Sufism in Western Scholarship, a Brief Overview,” Studies in Religion 43, no. 3 (2014): 355–70. For a convincing argument against interpreting Sufism as mysticism, see Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 1–5.

19 Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Shambhala, 1997), xvi. See also Alexander Knysh, “Historiography of Sufi Studies in the West,” in A Companion to the History of the Middle East, ed. Youssef M. Choueiri (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

20 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 28.

21 Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism, xv.

tariqas (lit: “Paths;” orders).22 This dissertation uses the term Sufism in accordance with Nile

Green’s definition of Sufism as “a powerful tradition of Muslim knowledge and practice bringing proximity to or mediation with God and believed to have been handed down from the

Prophet Muhammad through the saintly successors who followed him.”23

British colonialism in India enabled some of the first European scholarly publications about Sufism, which centered on Persian poetry. While there were some earlier reports of Sufis in French travel literature (see Chapter 2), scholarly interest in Sufism emerged alongside the birth of modern orientalism. A forerunner was the Welsh polymath William Jones (1746-1794), who became interested in Arabic and Persian poetry during his studies at Oxford and was later appointed as a judge in India, in 1783, where he served until the end of his life eleven years later.

He published several translations of Persian and Arabic poetry, including a French translation of

Hafez’s poems (appended to his first published translation from Persian, Histoire de Nader Chah

(London, 1770)), his subsequent Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), which also included excerpts of Persian poetry, and a Latin translation of the Mu’allaqat entitled Poeseos Asiaticae

Commentarii (1774). Shortly after his arrival in India, he founded the Asiatick Society (January

1784), which published a journal entitled Asiatick Researches. His December 1791 lecture to the society, “On the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindus,” included translations of Hafiz’s poems as well as excerpts from Rumi’s Mesnevi, which were possibly the first translations of parts of the Mesnevi in a European language.24 Similar to French Enlightenment thinkers

22 Nile Green, “Sufi,” ed. Gita Dharampal-Frick et al., Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 263.

23 Green, Sufism, 8.

24 Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi - Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl Al-Din Rumi (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2014), 565. For a printed version of the lecture, see William Jones, “On the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindus,” Asiatick

described in Chapter 2, Jones saw a similarity between European “thesists” (deists) and Sufis, and his interest was driven by this philosophical correspondence.

Jones’s work became influential in the German-speaking world, especially amongst a circle of intellectuals in Weimar and nearby Jena, which included Goethe and Gottfried von

Herder (1744-1803). Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752-1827), professor of Oriental languages at

Jena University, arranged a reprint of Jones’s Poeseos Asiaticae Commentarii in 1777. 25 He gave Goethe a copy, and Goethe also rendered several poems from Jones’s Arabic-English translation of the Mu’allaqat from English into German (Goethe learned English as a young man in Frankfurt). 26 In a section of the Notes of the West-östlicher Divan, Goethe praised Jones’s work.27

Jones translations were influential in both the Anglo- and German-speaking worlds because they introduced new poetic forms and imagery at a time when Greek and Latin classics were dominant. Persian poetry resonated with the Weimar group because of a wider search in the

German-speaking world for new inspiration outside of the dominant French Neoclassicism of the era, especially during the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement of the 1770s. This fit with Jones’s original interest in Persian and Arabic literature as an alternative to the Greek and

Researches: Or, Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, for Inquiring Into the History and Antiquities, the Arts, Sciences, and Literature, of Asia 3 (1796): 353–75.

25 William Jones, Poeseos Asiaticae Commentarii, ed. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (Lipsiae: Weidmannus et Reichius, 1777).

26 Katharina Mommsen, Goethe and the Poets of Arabia (Rochester: Camden House, 2014), 17– 18.

27 Goethe, West-East Divan, 272.

Latin classics.28 Jones’s translations also sparked a fashion for Persian and Arabic literature in

England, and they were read by leading writers such as Lord Byron (1788-1824) and Alfred

Tennyson (1809-1892), whose poem “Locksley Hall” was influenced by Jones’s translation of the Mu’allaqat.29

A shift in interest in Persian poetry to the study of Sufism as field emerged in the late

1810s. Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) included a detailed discussion of “Sooffees” (Sufis) in his 1815 History of Persia and encouraged Lieutenant James William Graham, who worked for

Malcolm, to publish his 1819 ‘Treatise on Sufi ism [sic], or Mahomedan Mysticism’ (originally delivered as a lecture in 1811), which is considered “the first independent treatment of Sufism in

Western scholarship of Islam.”30 German orientalist and theologian August Tholuck further advanced the emerging field of Sufi studies with his dissertation, SSufismus, sive, Theosophia

Persarum pantheistica (Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of the Persians, 1821), which was the “first major study of Sufism in a European language.”31

This study reflects the advancement of European interest in texts related to tasawwuf, demonstrated in Diez’s and Hammer’s works (described in Chapters 2-6) to a modern field of study, beginning with Tholuck’s work (Chapter 7). As such, it looks at the formative period of what became Sufi studies. Chapter 1 examines Heinrich Diez’s thought in the period of his life before his diplomatic mission to Istanbul (1771-1784) in the context of the German

28 A. J. Arberry, Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars, 2nd ed. (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), 81.

29 Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (New York: Overlook Press, 2006), 124–5.

30 Khalil and Sheikh, “Sufism in Western Scholarship, a Brief Overview,” 356.

31 August Tholuck, SSufismus, sive, Theosophia Persarum pantheistica (Berlin: Dümmler, 1821). Ibid., 357.

Enlightenment. Drawing from his correspondence and publications, it describes how Diez’s understanding of enlightenment drew upon the mystical concept of illumination, which centered on moral development. The chapter traces Diez’s involvement in freemasonry and his vision of a new political order wrested from the Church’s influence, which resulted in his participation in major debates of the German Enlightenment, including freedom of the press, toleration, Jewish emancipation, and the Pantheism Controversy.

Chapter 2 documents Diez’s involvement with the Galata Mevlevihanesi during his residence in Istanbul as the Prussian chargé d'affaires from 1784-91. It highlights connections between Ottoman Mevlevi Sufism, its role in Ottoman military and administrative reform

(Nizam-ı Cedid), and European diplomacy. It establishes Istanbul Mevlevi lodges as important players within Ottoman politics and describes the political and philosophical connections underpinning Ottoman-European diplomacy and exchange.

The remaining chapters trace Diez’s involvement as an orientalist after his return to

Berlin from Istanbul in 1791. Chapter 3 examines Diez’s translations of Ottoman advice literature. It argues that Diez used Ottoman advice literature to voice his support of the monarchy and a reinvigoration of Christianity based on Biblical law and morality. Chapter 4 examines a group of Viennese diplomat-orientalists, including Vincenz von Rosenzweig and

Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, who collected and translated Ottoman mystical poetry into

German. Their translations supported a vision of the post-Napoleonic German lands rooted in

Romanticism and German nationalism. Chapter 5 examines a feud between Diez and Hammer that was about the larger questions of competing visions of the future of the German-speaking world, expressed through a scholarly debate over orientalism. Chapter 6 examines the influence of Diez’s translations and correspondence with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on Goethe’s

thought. Chapter 7 introduces the theologian August Tholuck, who drew from Persian, Turkish and Arabic texts to formulate his expression of a new type of evangelical theology centered on the notion of rebirth through Jesus.

Taken together, these chapters use Diez’s life as an Ansatzpunkt to highlight a larger connection between European imperial rivalry, German politics, orientalism and tasawwuf. A study into Diez’s time reveals a philosophical link between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, mediated by diplomats, and how, following Napoleonic destruction, German thinkers – perhaps surprisingly – drew from material gathered in Istanbul to formulate and express political visions of the future for the German-speaking world.

Chapter 1: Heinrich Diez and the German Enlightenment

On April 21, 1769, an eighteen-year-old boy named Heinrich Diez arrived at the

Friedrichs-Universität (now Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) in Halle to study law.32

He left his family in Magdeburg, about fifty miles north, where his father Christian was a textile merchant. The university in Halle was a major center of the German Enlightenment, and Diez’s studies prepared him for his later involvement in Enlightenment debates, which eventually brought him to the attention of the Prussian king Frederick the Great, who appointed him the chargé d'affaires to the Ottoman Empire in 1784. Diez served in Istanbul for six years before returning to Prussia and becoming one of the foremost orientalists of his era, corresponding with and influencing authors such as Goethe.

Diez formed a philosophical outlook in Halle that stayed with him for the rest of his life and brought him to prominence within the Prussian court. Drawing from his correspondence and published works, this chapter reconstructs Diez’s ideas before his diplomatic service in Istanbul and his participation in the debates of the German Enlightenment. It begins with a discussion of the Enlightenment, and how Diez’s understanding of enlightenment fit with alternative views of enlightenment rooted in the ancient gnostic concept of illumination, the granting of divine wisdom after moral and spiritual purification, which was further developed in the German- speaking world in the seventeenth century through religious and esoteric movements (including

32 Franz Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes: Heinrich Friedrich von Diez,” Goethe- Jahrbuch 34 (1913): 84. Diez was later knighted during his service in Istanbul in 1786, adding “von” to his name.

Pietism and Rosicrucianism) and eighteenth-century freemasonry.33 The chapter then examines the centrality of moral philosophy to Diez’s thought, informed by his involvement in freemasonry, which sets the stage for his later work on Ottoman moral philosophy (see Chapter

3). It continues with how Diez, along with Illuminati thinkers, appropriated the ancient concept of illumination as the basis for their vision of political rule and examines Diez’s interventions in the political debates of the German Enlightenment including freedom of the press, the press, toleration, Jewish emancipation, and pantheism. Diez’s thought during these years set the stage for his interaction with the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul (see Chapter 2), a world center of illumination philosophy. Although Diez is discussed in two contemporary studies of the debates of the Enlightenment, a full study of his thought does not exist.34 Diez’s work opens up possibilities for understanding religious and esoteric aspects of the Enlightenment related to freemasonry as well as the Enlightenment’s global connections, including with the Ottoman

Empire.

Illumination: The Forgotten Enlightenment

Aufklärung is “not the knowledge of abstract, speculative, theoretical sciences, which inflate the mind and do nothing to improve the heart.”35 -Adam Weishaupt, 1782

Although there is a scholarly consensus that an historical process called “the

Enlightenment” occurred in European history, debates continue about how to define it.36 Ernst

33 The Bible refers to gnostics, or receivers of divine wisdom as “illuminated.” See G. Krüger, “Gnosticism,” New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1953).

34 See Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 (Oxford University Press, 2011); Peter K. J. Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2013).

35 Qtd. in Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 835.

Cassirer and Peter Gay argued that “critique” was the common thread of the Enlightenment. 37

Further research into the Enlightenment questioned its coherence. For example, J.G.A Pocock distinguished between multiple “Enlightenments,” while Margaret Jacob and Jonathan Israel identified strands of “radical” and “moderate” Enlightenment thought.38 Yet others questioned the unity of the Enlightenment itself: J. C. D. Clark proposed that historians abandon the term altogether.39 Meanwhile, post-structuralists critiqued the universalism of the Enlightenment.40 In a 2010 essay in the American Historical Review, Karen O’Brien argued the post-structuralist challenge to the Enlightenment has been overcome and a new turn in Enlightenment studies has brought back the “primacy of ideas.”41

36 For recent historiographical overviews of the Enlightenment, see: James Schmidt, “Enlightenment as Concept and Context,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75, no. 4 (2014): 677– 85; Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–9; Sebastian Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique,” The American Historical Review 117, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 999–1027.

37 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), translation of Die Philosophie der Aufklärung (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1932); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966).

38 Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (Allen & Unwin, 1981); Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

39 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660-1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics During the Ancien Régime (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 9.

40For an overview of these debates, see Keith Michael Baker and Peter Hanns Reill, What’s Left of Enlightenment?: A Postmodern Question (Stanford University Press, 2001).

41 Karen O’Brien, “The Return of the Enlightenment,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (December 1, 2010): 1426.Karen O’ Brien, “The Return of the Enlightenment,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010), 1426.

Contemporary historical struggles to define the Enlightenment reflect eighteenth-century debates about the meaning of the word “Enlightenment” itself. As James Schmidt noted, nowhere in Europe was the term “Enlightenment” (Aufklärung) so contested as in the German- speaking world.42 In a debate in the pages of the Berlinische Monatsschrift in 1783-84, thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn sought to answer the question “What is

Enlightenment (Aufklärung)?”43 Kant famously wrote, “Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another…Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.” 44 Kant’s association of enlightenment with the private use of reason forms the basis for many contemporary understandings of the word enlightenment, which Dan Edelstein described as “a tendency among scholars today to brandish

Kant’s famous essay as a one-stop shop for defining the Enlightenment.”45 However, Ian Hunter describes this as the “Kantian formalisation” of Aufklärung, writing “historiography remains transfixed by the image of a single philosophical Aufklärung whose unity is secured through

Kant’s philosophy of the subject, and whose central characteristic is the normative extension of rationally self-governing subjecthood into all areas of ‘society.”46 Although Kant’s understanding of enlightenment became the most definitive one, it was only one of many

42 James Schmidt, ed. What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth- Century Questions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), ix.

43 This discussion has been partially translated into English in Schmidt, ed. What is Enlightenment?

44 James Schmidt, ed. What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth- Century Questions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), ix.

45 Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 117.

46 Hunter, Rival Enlightenments, 2, 15.

competing views of enlightenment in the eighteenth century, many of which were rooted in religious or esoteric thought. 47

History of Illumination

Two words meant “enlightenment” in eighteenth-century Germany: Aufklärung and

Erleuchtung.48 Aufklärung originated as a word that referred to the natural world: to make something clear when exposed to the light of the sun, which is expressed etymologically in the root “klar” or clarness.49 In contrast, the word Erleuchtung is related to the Latin word for illumination (illuminatio), tied to the gnostic concept of divine light from within leading to esoteric knowledge. Grimm’s dictionary, began a generation after Diez, cites a Biblical passage from Corinthians II to define Erleuchtung: “He made his light shine in our hearts to give us the illumination of the perception of clarity of God (Klarheit Gottes).”50 Erleuchung, for its believers, is a form of knowledge granted from the Divine to access metaphysical secrets, or the esoteric.

These two terms also reflect different philosophical understandings. Aufklärung is possible through perception, associated with the Cartesian model of human cognition in the mind. This empiricist approach relies on the senses, which makes Kant’s definition of

47 See Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review, 108, no. 4 (2003), 1061-1080 and Richie Robertson, “Religion and the Enlightenment: A Review Essay,” German History 25, no. 3 (2007).

48 Horst Stuke, “Aufklärung,” 248. Aufklärung and Erleuchtung can both be translated as “enlightenment;” for the sake of clarity, I translate Aufklärung as enlightenment and Erleuchtung as illumination here.

49 Horst Stuke, “Aufklärung,” 247.

50 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “Erleuchtung,” Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm, 1854-1961, vol. 3, 904. Published online by Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, woerterbuchnetz.de

Enlightenment possible through the use of reason. In contrast, Erleuchtung is only possible by means of divine illumination of the heart, which was understood as the seat of the soul in

Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic worldviews. That is, Diez and others believed the mind

(Verstand) could be enlightened (aufgeklärt), whereas illumination (Erleuchtung) belonged to the heart. This is the essence of Weishaupt’s above quote, which argues that true illumination touches the heart, which has nothing to do with the “knowledge of abstract, speculative, theoretical sciences, which inflate the mind.” 51 Aufklärung speaks to reason and the mind, whereas illumination centers on the affects. Both of these words were used during the

Enlightenment, although contemporary understandings of the Enlightenment relied on

Aufklärung. A study into Enlightenment understandings of illumination reveals the significance of a very non-rational side of the Enlightenment rooted in esoterism.

Illumination is a theory of knowledge that holds that human faculties can be aided by divine inspiration, usually after a long process of moral purification. It was appropriated from

Neoplatonism in the fourth century by Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), who argued that illumination, or divine assistance, serves five functions in cognition: “the source of cognitive capacity, cognitive content, help with the process of cognition, certitude, and knowledge of

God.”52 Through divine illumination, God was believed to help humans form and express thoughts known to be true. Christian theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and

Bonaventure (1221-1274) further developed the Augustinian concept of illumination before it was ultimately rejected in the late thirteenth century in favor of rationalist approaches to human cognition developed by Franciscan thinkers such as Peter John Olivi (1248-1298), Henry of

51 Qtd. in Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 835.

52 Lydia Schumacher, Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), 1, 4.

Ghent (1217-1293), and John Duns Scotus (1266-1308).53 By the end of the thirteenth century, the theory of illumination had fallen out of favor in the West.

The idea of illumination was, however, further developed by Islamic philosophers, who also drew upon the Neoplatonic tradition. The Persian philosopher Suhrawardi (ca. 1170-

1208) founded the school of Illuminationist (ishraqi) philosophical thought, which, like

Augustine, held moral purification was a requisite for knowledge through illumination.54 His work was influential for Islamic philosophy throughout the early modern period and informed various Sufi movements throughout the Middle East and South Asia.55 One of the chief routes of transmission of his thought into the Ottoman Empire was through a translation conducted by a shaykh of the Galata Mevlevihanesi, Ismail Rusuhi Dede (also known as Ankaravi İsmail Rusuhi

Efendi, d. 1631), who translated Suhrawardi’s work into Turkish.56 Diez later engaged with this

Sufi lodge during his diplomatic mission in Istanbul, which may indicate one connection between illumination as understood in Europe with the notion of illumination developed in the

Islamic world.

Theories of illumination re-emerged in Europe through the work of seventeenth-century writers who laid the theological foundation of Pietism. Lutheran pastor Johann Arndt (1555-

1621) combined Hermetic and Paracelsian ideas with Lutheranism in his 1605 work, Von wahrem Christenthum (Of True Christianity), to “emphasize living a holy life marked by

53 Ibid., 181.

54 Mehdi Amin Razavi Aminrazavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination (Routledge, 2014), 16.

55 Aminrazavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination.

56 Roxanne Marcotte, “Suhrawardi,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/suhrawardi/.

humility, self-denial, and imitation of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.”57 His emphasis was on development of the inner self rather than the external church.58 The shoemaker

Jakob Böhme (1575-1624) further developed the notion of rebirth. Böhme, who claimed to have visions of divine light in 1595 and 1600 that showed him the true nature of the world, “taught a

Christianity of the transformed life, not Luther’s Christianity of forgiveness through the imputed righteousness of Christ.”59 He also connected this to alchemical notions, describing the reborn person as “hidden in the old one like gold in stone.”60 These thinkers laid the ideological foundation of the Pietist movement, which emphasized inner transformation through the notion of spiritual rebirth.

The concept of illumination was central to the Pietist and other Protestant movements.

Arndt argued illumination was only possible through moral purification, which required renunciation of the world. He wrote it is possible for those who “keep their inmost souls pure from the creatures and the world. Thus God illuminates from within, for all must stream forth from within God’s being. This inner light then shines forth in the works.”61 This light was believed to come from the Holy Spirit for those that followed the example set by Jesus.62 The

Quakers, who called themselves the Children of Light, also drew from light metaphors and took

57 Douglas H. Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 28.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., 35.

60 Ibid.

61 R. Seeberg, “Illumination,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1953), 450.

62 Ibid.

a Biblical passage about illumination as their motto (“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”). 63 The origin of the interest of these Protestant movements in illumination remains unclear, but there could be a connection between early modern European travelers and Sufi orders in South Asia and the

Middle East, which further developed Suhrawardi’s work.64 For example, early Pietist writers drew from the works of the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493-1541), who studied in the Middle

East, most likely with Sufi orders. There is also a history of early Protestant engagement with the

Ottoman Empire, which is only now beginning to be understood.65

Halle became a center of the Pietist movement in the late seventeenth century under the theology professor August Hermann Francke (1663-1727), who founded the Halle

“Waisenhaus” (“orphanage”) to provide for needy children, which included a school, hospital and other services.66 The foundations themselves grew throughout the eighteenth century and also became a major center for the propagation of Pietism through the organization of overseas missions. Through the orphanage’s hospital, Halle also became a center for early modern scientific thought. The hospital provided training for doctors and eventually became attached to the University itself. The doctor Georg Ernst Stahl (1659-1734), a Pietist who published

63 John 8:12.

64 Although there were not any (known) Latin translations of Suhrawardi’s work in Europe in the medieval and early modern periods, there is evidence that his work was known in certain circles in the West. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, for example, argues that the Oxford school in the thirteenth century was aware of Suhrawardi’s theory of illumination. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “The Spread of the Illuminationist School of Suhrawardi,” Studies in Comparative Religion 6, no. 3 (Summer 1972).

65 See, for example, Markus Friedrich, Orientbegegnungen deutscher Protestanten in der Frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, M: Klostermann, 2012).

66 Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, 117.

extensively on alchemy, was the chair of medicine at the University from 1694-1715.67 By the time Diez arrived at the University of Halle, the orphanage was still a stronghold of Pietism, although Wolffianism exerted a greater influence at the University.

Illumination and Freemasonry

Concepts of illumination further developed in the eighteenth-century German-speaking world through the growth of speculative freemasonry, which emerged in the German lands in

1737. Two of the eighteenth-century’s major German rulers, Holy Roman Emperor Francis I

(1708-1765) and Prussian king Frederick the Great (1740-1786), were both initiated into freemason lodges in 1731 and 1738 respectively. Freemasonry in the mid-eighteenth century grew to include various competing orders among the higher grades. The first was the order of the

Gold and Rosy Cross, which was the main eighteenth-century form of Rosicrucianism. The freemason Grand Lodge in Berlin, Zu den drei Weltkugeln (The Three Globes), became a center for the Gold and Rosy Cross.68 vThe second was the Illuminati, founded by university professor

Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830), as the “League of the Perfectiblists” in Ingolstadt, Bavaria in

1778.69 Literally “The Enlightened Ones” in Latin, the Illuminati were also known as the

Erleuchteten, signifying their tie to illumination (Erleuchtung). They grew from a small group

67 He later changed his view on alchemy. See Kevin Chang, “Georg Ernst Stahl’s Alchemical Publications: Anachronism, Reading Market, and a Scientific Lineage Redefined,” in New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry, ed. Lawrence M. Principe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 23–43.

68 Christopher McIntosh, The Rose Cross and the Age of Reason: Eighteenth-Century Rosicrucianism in Central Europe and Its Relationship to the Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 43.

69 Several other (apparently unrelated) associations in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Europe also used the name “Illuminati.” See Paul Tschackert, “Illuminati,” The New Schaff- Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1953), 449.

of only nineteen members in Bavaria in 1778 to approximately 2,500 members throughout the

German-speaking world seven years later by operating in in freemason lodges, where only higher-ranking members were fully informed about the organization’s goals.70 The Weimar court, led by Duke Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1757-1828), and the writers under his patronage, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), joined the Illuminati in 1783, and Weimar became an Illuminati center after the group was banned in Bavaria in 1785 (see Chapter 5).

Moral philosophy was central to Illuminati thought. Jonathan Israel described the

Illuminati as the “most extensive and remarkable subversive organization in Europe prior to

1789,” whose unstated goal was to non-violently overthrow the aristocracy and replace

Christianity with natural religion.71 As the foundation of society, they envisioned a “‘general rule of morality’ (allgemeines Sittenregiment) that would naturally create virtuous conduct, fraternity, and self determination.”72 The Illuminati’s original name, the Perfectiblists, refers to their notion of human perfection through the cultivation of morality. This was also the goal of one of its chief members, Adolf Knigge (1752-96), who still remains well-known in Germany for his book on etiquette, Über den Umgang mit Menschen (On Human Relations, 1788).73

Illuminati believed that the practice of etiquette and proper behavior could cultivate morality in the heart, leading to enlightenment and bringing order to society without the monarchy and the

70Sabine Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment: With a Translation of Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s The Fundamental Concepts and Principles of Ethics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995), 115; Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 836–7. Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment, 115. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 836–7.

71 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 838.

72 Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment, 113.

73 Adolph Knigge, Über den Umgang mit Menschen (Hannover: Schmidt, 1788).

Church, thus taking the esoteric concept of illumination to a new level by making it the basis of a state.

The Illuminati thinker Karl Leonard Reinhold (1757-1823) also engaged extensively with moral philosophy.74 Reinhold was a former Jesuit and member of the freemason lodge Zur wahren Eintracht (To Real Harmony) in Vienna, which also included members such as composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). He was a member of the Illuminati (listed as Illuminatus minor in a membership record) since 1783. 75 He was instrumental in the German

Enlightenment by bringing Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to a wider audience through his

Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie (Letters on the Kantian Philosophy, 1786-87), published in the Enlightenment journal Der Teutsche Merkur (The German Mercury). Reinhold’s work, like other Illuminati, focused on the importance of ethics. Sabine Roehr wrote, “In assigning primacy to ethical enlightenment, [Reinhold] went beyond enlightened rationalism, which had emphasized conceptual clarity and distinctness. He also went further than Kant, who had based enlightenment on the moral decision to think autonomously. Reinhold determined that ethical concepts were the most important content of autonomous thought.”76 Reinhold’s understanding of enlightenment as moral development fit with the concept of illumination (Erleuchtung) rather than the rationalist approach favored by Kant. Illuminati thinkers such as Reinhold offered a different approach to Enlightenment, based on the esoteric concept of illumination, than the

Kantian notion of Enlightenment through the private use of reason.

74 Sabine Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment: With a Translation of Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s The Fundamental Concepts and Principles of Ethics (University of Missouri Press, 1995).

75 Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment, 199.

76 Roehr, A Primer on German Enlightenment, 150.

Diez on Freemasonry, Illumination and Moral Philosophy

Almost immediately after arrival at the Friedrichs-Universität in Halle, Diez joined the

Amicist Order (Amicistenorden; also known as Mosellanerorden), a student group throughout the German lands from 1771-1811 with ties to freemasonry. 77 Diez attended the lodge

Constantia, one of Halle’s three main freemason lodges, whose members were mostly officers of the Anhalt-Bernburg regiment, merchants, and scholars.78 Diez developed lasting friendships through his association with the lodge, and many of his freemason brothers there went on to become significant figures in the German Enlightenment. He established a correspondence with

H.A.O Reichard (1751-1828), the head of the Jena Amicist Lodge, during these years and remained in contact for many years.79 Through the lodge, Diez also met one of his closest friends during this time, popular philosopher Ludwig August Unzer (1748-1774). Unzer put him in touch with political scientist Jakob Mauvillion (1743-1794), a member of the Illuminati who supported a free press and laissez-faire economics. Diez’s involvement with the lodge shaped his intellectual development by putting him in contact with other freemasons and Illuminati who were engaged with similar philosophical questions.

In the third year of his studies, Diez began to publish works about moral philosophy and secret societies. His first work, Vortheile geheimer Gesellschaften für die Welt (Advantages of

Secret Societies for the World, 1772), argued that secret societies benefit the state by cultivating

77 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 84.

78 H.A.O. Reichard (1751-1828): seine Selbstbiographie, ed. Hermann Uhde (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1877), 68. This correspondence appears to be lost. (?)

79 Ibid., 75.

morality, patriotism, and a good upbringing (Erziehung) in young men.80 His second publication, Beobachtungen über der sittlichen Natur des Menschen (Observations on the Moral

Nature of Humans, 1773), argued that the development of morality is a human being’s ultimate duty towards the Divine, which is accomplished through purification of the heart (Herz).81 His third publication, Versuch über dem Patriotißmus (Essay on Patriotism, 1774), describes humankind’s duties to country in terms of morality.82 Taken together, these three works present

Diez’s main arguments about moral philosophy: 1) secret societies are necessary for the development of morality; 2) morality is the most important part of being human; 3) moral cultivation benefits the state by producing patriotic citizens.

Diez’s first publication, Vortheile geheimer Gesellschaften für die Welt (Advantages of

Secret Societies for the World, 1772), outlined the advantages secret societies offer to the state by cultivating moral citizens. He published the work anonymously, signing it only with a cryptic

“D” for Diez. The work sought to refute commonly held stereotypes about secret societies, especially that they were dangerous for the state and religion. Instead, Diez argued, secret societies benefit the state by producing virtuous citizens.

Secret societies cultivate virtue in their members, Diez argued, by encouraging them to follow rules that conform to natural law (Naturrecht) in accordance with reason and human nature. The essence of all religions is natural law, which consists of a set of divine rules and instructions about how to live. He wrote, “the substance of all religions consist of the rules of

80 Anonymous (Heinrich Diez), Vortheile geheimer Gesellschaften für die Welt, von einem Unzertrennlichen in der A..(Halle: Hemmerde, 1772).

81 Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, Frühe Schriften (1772-1784) ed. Manfred Voigts (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), 42.

82 These are the original titles, although they do not conform to modern German grammar.

natural law; these were created from the nature of God and the moral nature of Man.”83 The basis of all religion, thus, is law. Natural law is a series of laws stemming from human nature and can thus be understood through reason. By learning to follow the rules in a freemason lodge, he argued, the initiate learns how to obey natural law: “The laws of a perfect order…refer to morality (Moralität) from which confirms the following description of the truth: obeying laws of nature, acting virtuously, enthroned in the assembly of brothers…”84 Through a series of strict laws in the order, members improve their morality and cultivate the capacity to obey. Diez wrote:

It purifies his feelings, improves his knowledge, teaches him to taste pure pleasure, and tacitly leads him to the temple of all virtues. In short, it educates (bildet) true humans and virtuous men…in such institutions, one learns to obey without violence and bow one’s head under strict laws out of conviction and love.85

Obeying the strict laws of a freemason lodge teaches the young man to set aside his own passions (“cleans his feelings”) and direct his attention to the cultivation of virtue. Learning in this matter builds obedience out of conviction and attachment to the order, rather than the threat of violence, which can be harnessed for the power of the state.

83 “das Wesentliche aller Religionen bestehet in den Vorschriften eines gesunden Naturrechts; diese werden aus der Natur GOttes und aus der moralischen Natur des Menschen geschöpft.“ Heinrich Friedrich von Diez and Manfred Voigts, Frühe Schriften (1772-1784) (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010), 19.

84 “Die Gesezze eines guten und vollkommenen Ordens...bezieht sich auf die Moralität, daher mag folgende Schilderung die Wahrheit bestätigen: die Befolgung der Gesezze der Natur, die thätige Tugend, thront in den Versammlungen der Brüder...“ Ibid., 14.

85 “…ein Bundniß auf den Menschen überhaupt reichen Seegen herabfliessen lasse: es reinigt sein Gefühl: es verbessert seine Kenntniß; es lehrt ihn reines Vergnügen schmecken; es fürt ihn stillschweigend zum Tempel aller Tugend; kurz, es bildet wahre Menschen und tugendhafte Männer…unter solchen Anstalten lernt man ohne Gewalt gehorchen; aus Ueberzeugung und Liebe beugt man den Hals unter strengen Gesezzen.” Ibid., 16.

Secret societies, according to Diez, cultivate subjects who will be loyal to the state out of conviction rather than the threat of violence. Diez called this “patriotic friendship” (Patriotische

Freundschaft), which he argued is even stronger than love of one’s country (Vaterlandsliebe).86

Diez invited his readers to imagine a state built on patriotic friendship:

Imagine that the subjects’ love of their ruler was universal, that the kingdom helped the poor out of brotherly love, that everyone served according to his abilities out of heart-felt gratitude, that the lord of the land sincerely loved his people, as the top philanthropist rather than acting as a despot. When all of this and more were the basis of a nation, when the common good was the universal motivation and goal of every action, what rich blessings would not spread forth about all lands? Sinners wouldn’t be able to slink around in the dark corrupting people, shameful deeds would no longer be favored, and Hell itself would be driven away from the ranks of the living. And like the Republican Romans sacrificed their blood and lives for freedom, a fortunate people will, out of patriotic friendship: defend the rights of their king, punish injustice, and freely fight for the common good.87

Obedience out of love, argued Diez, has three advantages for the monarch. First, instead of fear or violence, the monarch rules through patriotic friendship, since cultivated citizens help one another and serve the state. As the “top philanthropist,” the ruler fulfills the obligations to his subjects out of love rather than tyranny. This could be a reference to the Prussian monarch of the time, Frederick the Great (1712-1786), who was himself a freemason and model of an

86 Ibid., 17.

87 “Stellet auch vor, daß die Liebe unter den Unterthanen eines Fürsten allgemein sey; daß der Reiche als brüderlicher Zuneigung den Armen aufhelfe; daß dieser aus herzlicher Dankbarkeit jenem nach seinen Kräften diente; daß der Herr des Landes sein Volk aufrichtig liebte; selbiges, nicht als Despot, sondern als oberster Menschenfreund behandelte; wenn dies alles und noch mehreres bey einer Nation zum Grundsazze würde; wenn das gemeinschaftliche Beste das allgemeine Triebwerk und der Punkt wäre, worin die Handlungen eines jeden insbesondere abzwekken; welcher reiche Segen würde sich sodann nicht über alle Länder verbreiten; Frevler würden nicht mehr zum Verderben der Menschen in Finstern herum schleichen; Schandthaten würden nicht mehr begünstiget; die Hölle selbst würde aus den Reihen der Sterblichen vertrieben werden; und so wie der Republicanische Römer der Freyheit sein Blut und Leben opferte; eben so würde ein glükliches Volk aus Patriotischer Freundschaft die Rechte seines Königs vertheidigen, das Unrecht bestrafen, und für das gesamte Heil, ohne Zwang, freywillig kämpfen.” Ibid.

enlightened monarch. Second, the genuine goodness of this utopian state, argued Diez, would attract the blessings of God and drive away all darkness from the kingdom. The non-virtuous parts of society (“sinners” and “shameful deeds”) would lose their power to corrupt others as overall virtue in the society grew. Third, patriotic citizens would be loyal to the monarch and freely sacrifice themselves for the state (common good) without compulsion. The patriotic friendship that is cultivated in freemason lodges is the cornerstone for an ideal state that would be favored by the Almighty.

In addition to creating loyal subjects, secret societies also benefit the private sphere. Diez wrote, “If then the members of this type of perfect society of lovers of true virtue are sincere friends, useful citizens, and pillars of religion, when they complete the actions incumbent on them in those regards (of friendship, citizenship and religion), how could anyone doubt that they will also be upright in their home affairs and be pleasant husbands and conscientious fathers?”88

For Diez, the cultivation of virtue in the freemason lodge also creates better husbands and fathers, which also benefits women and children. According to Diez, the secret society produces a morally cultivated citizen that is of benefit to the king, society at large, and his own family.

Although the Church talks about morality, Diez argued, it seldom cultivated virtue in its members. Although “the teachings of the Eternal are proclaimed in the pulpit and obeying them is emphasized, and although they are heard, the heart remains untouched.”89 Although preachers can recite the laws and teachings of religion, for Diez, virtue can only be achieved through

88 “Wenn denn also die Theilnehmer einer, in ihrer Art vollkommenen, Gesellschaft Liebhaber der wahren Tugend, aufrichtige Freunde, nüzzliche Staatsbürger und Stüzzen der Religion sind, wenn sie die ihnen daher obliegende Pflichten zur That treiben; wie könnte man noch länger Bedenken tragen, sie auch für rechtschaffene Haushälter, für angenehme Gatten und für sorgsame Väter zu halten?”Ibid., 20.

89 “Auf Kanzeln werden die Lehren des Ewigen verkündigt und deren Befolgung eingeschärft; beydes wird angehört; das Herz aber bleibt ungerührt...“ Ibid., 19.

practice, which is only possible in the freemason lodge. In addition, Diez argued that all of the teachings of religion derive from natural law.90 Since secret societies teach natural law, they are closer to the Divine (the source of natural law) and thus superior to the Church.

Diez’s second publication, Beobachtungen über der sittlichen Natur des Menschen

(Observations on the Ethical Nature of Humans, 1773), further developed his ideas of moral philosophy. In it, he defined moral virtue as “the agreement of our principles and resulting acts with the rules of a pure and true natural law drawn from the nature of God and human moral nature.“ 91 Morality is thus, for Diez, the accordance of human acts with natural law. Vice

(Laster), the opposite of morality, for Diez is “whatever goes against the obdedience we owe to

God and to the rules of humanity.“92 Thus moral virtue is obedience to God, expressed through obedience to natural law. Diez argued that is essentially the only virtue required of humans, writing “Moral virtue is the only pure and true virtue that the Everknowing God begs from us.”93

For Diez, cultivation of morality is essential to being human. A person’s moral refinement is the highest goal in life, and everyone has this capacity.94

In this piece, Diez further elaborated on morality and human nature. Diez viewed human nature as an Essence (Wesentlich) composed of various capacities, which he described as:

90 “aus der Natur Gottes und aus der moralischen Natur des Menschen geschöpft.“ Ibid.

91 “die Uebereinstimmung unserer Grundsäzze und der daher fliessenden Handlungen mit den Vorschriften eines geläuterten und wahren Naturrechts, welches aus der Natur GOttes und aus der menschlichen moralischen Natur gezogen ist.” Ibid., 79.

92 “was wider den Gehorsam, so, wir GOtt schuldig sind, und wider die Regeln der Menschheit insbesondere läuft.” Ibid.

93 “Moralische Tugend ist die einzige ächte und wahre Tugend, die der Allweise GOtt von uns heischt.” Ibid.

94 Ibid., 35.

that which is inseparably bound to our Self. It cannot be separated from our whole (unserm Ganzen) without ceasing to be human. The capacity to think is therefore an essential part of our entire existence (Bestand). The ethical (Sittliche) corresponds to the Essence (Wesentlich), in that it is likewise inseparably bound…95

Diez had a holistic understanding of human nature as an essence that consisted of various capacities, such as the ability to think. For Diez, morality was similarly a human capacity.

These capacities could be through the refinement of one’s essence. Here, Diez used the metaphor of a jewel. He continued:

The Essence is a whole which is liable to impurities like a freshly-mined jewel from a mountain. Once the roughness is removed from it, it becomes finer and more precious and generally more cultivated and refined: this is what I call moral. It is nothing more than the Essence of man after education (Bildung) and refinement (Veredlung).96

Thus for Diez, the purpose of freemasonry is moral cultivation of the invidual’s essence. As the individual is improved through association with a secret society, which provides him with education (Bildung) and refinement (Veredlung), the impurities of his essence are removed, similar to the process of a course diamond being mined from a mountain and honed at a jeweler’s shop.

Diez further elaborated on the relevance of moral refinement for society in his third essay, Versuch über dem Patriotißmus (Essay on Patriotism, 1774), which describes

95 “Wir sagen, daß in Beziehung auf uns (von der groben Körperlichkeit abstrahirt) dasjenige Wesentlich sey, was mit unserm Selbst überhaupt unzertrennlich verbunden ist. Es kann nicht von unserm Ganzen gerissen werden, wenn wir nicht zugleich aufhören sollen, Menschen zu seyn. So ist das Vermögen zu denken ein wesentliches Stük unsers ganzen Bestandes. Das Sittliche entspricht darinn dem Wesentlichen, daß es gleichfalls mit uns unauflöslich zusammenhängt...” Ibid.

96 “Das Wesentliche ist ein Ganzes, an dem noch manche Unreinheit haftet, gleich einem Edelgesteine, der erst aus dem Gebirge gegraben ist. Wird aber jenem das grobe angenommen; wird es feiner und edler gemacht und überhaupt bearbeitet und gebildet: so entsteht das daraus, was ich Moralisch nenne. Welches dahero nichts anders als das Wesentliche des Menschen nach der Bildung und Veredlung ist.” Ibid.

humankind’s duties to country in terms of morality.97 For Diez, the result of secret societies is patriotism. A patriot is defined in an early nineteenth-century German dictionary as “someone who encourages the common good, even at his own detriment, who prefers the general welfare over his own.”98 Diez defines patriotism as “love of humanity” and the patriot as a “friend of humanity.”99 Patriotism is tied to the cultivated heart: “The main definition of a patriot must be a good, honest heart that is distant from falsehood and malice.”100 A patriot is a better servant of the monarch than one who merely serves out of his own interests.101 The secret society builds patriotic friendship (Patriotische Freundschaft), which in the end is in the interest of the state.

One of the stated goals of the Amicists was to cultivate patriotic friendship that would lead to civility and virtue.102 Thus secret societies, for Diez, further the state’s interests because they build loyal citizens.

Taken together, these three works present Diez’s thoughts on moral philosophy, secret societies, and the state. For Diez, secret societies cultivate morality, which is man’s highest goal.

The state benefits from virtuous people, since they make loyal citizens. The monarch can rule out of love and people’s commitment to the common good rather than through fear, violence,

97 These are the original titles, although they do not conform to modern German grammar.

98 Johann Adelung, “ Der Patriot,” Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, (Vienna: Bauer, 1811), 671-2.

99 Diez and Voigts, Frühe Schriften (1772-1784), 94.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., 16.

102 C. Lenning, “Amicisten,” Allgemeines Handbuch der Freimaurerei (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1863), 21.

and despotism. These ideas, which view virtue as man’s highest goal, and require a brotherhood to fulfill it, share similarities with Illuminati thought as discussed above.

Transforming the Self, Transforming the State

After his publications on moral philosophy, Diez took a five-year break from publishing as he became more deeply involved in the wider networks of the German Enlightenment. Shortly after graduation from Halle in April or May 1773, Diez went to Halberstadt (about a hundred kilometers northeast of Halle), where he met with Unzer and other Enlightenment thinkers.

Unzer described the time in a letter to Mauvillon as “eight philosophical days, which will be unforgettable to me.” 103 Diez and Unzer most likely visited Ludwig Gleim (1719-1803) in

Halberstadt and the circle of young poets around him called the Halberstädter Dichterkreis. Diez reportedly developed a “frequent correspondence” (häufigem Briefwechsel) with Gleim; however, these letters no longer remain.104 Gleim was also in touch with a number of Diez’s other correspondents, including Unzer.105 Around the same time, Diez also developed a friendship with the Enlightenment thinker Christian von Dohm (1751-1820), who was also a

103 “wir sind kürzlich in Halberstadt zusammen gestossen, und haben dort 8 philosophische Tage durchlebt, die mir unvergesslich sein werden.“ Mauvillon Briefwechsel, 51. See also Jacobs, “Unzer, Johann August,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (München/Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1895), http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/ADB:Unzer,_Johann_August.

104 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 85. One letter is reprinted on p. 87. The Gleimhaus in Halberstadt, which houses Gleim’s Nachlass, reports to not have any letters from Diez and none remain in Diez’s Nachlass at the Berlin Staatsbibliothek either, since Diez destroyed much of his personal correspondence.

105 See Berlin Staatsbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung, Slg. Darmstaedter 3a 1760: Unzer, Johann August. Letter dated April 23, 1776.

close friend of Gleim. 106 As Diez’s involvement with these two major figures of the German

Enlightenment grew, so did his interest in the political implications of moral philosophy.

During these years, Diez also worked at the Prussian judiciary in Magdeburg (Provinzial

Justizcollegium) to support himself and his parents. 107 He began as a trainee (Referendar), was promoted to associate (ersten Expidenten) and eventually chancellery director (Kanzleidirektor) in 1781.108 He came into contact with many foreign soldiers in the Magdeburg Garrison, including Jewish, Polish, Russian, and Hungarian soldiers, and possibly began to learn other languages during this time.109 He was reportedly not particularly happy at his job, which he felt had limited prospects for career advancement.110 His extensive correspondence with

Enlightenment figures throughout the German-speaking linked him to greater debates in the

Enlightenment, and he complained that no one else in Magdeburg shared his philosophical outlook.

Perhaps it was upon recommendation of Dohm that Diez began to publish again after five years. Dohm, together with Heinrich Christian Boie (1744-1806), founded and edited the

Deutsches Museum, a literary journal in which Diez commenced his publications with the article

“Miszellen für Denker” in 1780.111 Publications about freedom of the press (Apologie der

106 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 86. W. Gronau, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm Nach Seinem Wollen Und Handeln (Lemgo: Meyersche Hof-Buchhandlung, 1824), 65.

107 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 85; Gronau, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm Nach Seinem Wollen Und Handeln, 108.

108 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 2, no. 125 (May 1817): 165–68.

109 Gronau, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm Nach Seinem Wollen Und Handeln, 108.

110 Ibid.

111 Heinrich von Diez, “Miszellen Für Denker,” Deutsches Museum 2 (1780): 136–43.

Duldung u. Preßfreiheit, 1781), the position of Jews in Prussian society (Ueber Juden, 1783), and Spinoza (Benedikt von Spinoza nach Leben und Lehren, 1783) soon followed. Diez used these publications to defend the rights of naturalists to express their views in what, to him, seemed like a war with the Church over the future of the state. The freemason lodge was at the center of this, as lended an institutional expression to naturalism. In all of these debates, Diez often took a position that argued for the maximum amount of freedom possible. Diez envisioned a transformed society where people would be free to publish their opinions, Jews would have equal rights, and the Church would be relegated to the position of nothing more than an

“association.”112 His vision of the state was the radical reimagining shared by many of his freemason brothers.

The Fragmentenstreit Freedom of the press became a pressing political issue in the late 1770s with the so-called

Fragmentenstreit, described by Jonathan Israel as “one of the later Enlightenment’s greatest, most decisive controversies.”113 The writer Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) sparked the controversy by publishing fragments of Reimarus’s Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes (Apology, or Defense of the Rational Worshippers of God), between 1774-1778. Lessing described the publication as a “total onslaught on the Christian religion,” arguing that the Bible was not based on revelation and Christianity strayed from

Jesus’s original teachings. 114 It was a direct assault from the naturalist camp on all major

112 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 171. Although Diez does not cite him, this echoes John Locke’s description of the Church as a “voluntary society of men” in the Letter Concerning Toleration (1689).

113 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 315. For an overview of the Fragmentenstreit, see Ibid., 315–325.

114 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 315.

Protestant movements in the German-speaking world, including the Neologs, who were seeking a middle way between orthodox Lutheranism and radical freethinkers. Under pressure from the

Church, the Duke of Brunswick confiscated the manuscript in 1778 and banned Lessing from publishing any more of it. For naturalists like Diez, this was further evidence of the Church’s attack on freethinking, which underscored the necessity of securing freedom of the press.

Diez’s 1781 work, Apologie zur Duldung und Pressfreiheit, (Defense of Toleration and

Freedom of the Press) argued that freethinking should be protected by the state through freedom of religion and the press. For him, the main obstacle to this was religion itself. Diez mounted an attack on religion, writing:

Nowhere must the freedom to think and write break free as much as from the area of religion. In all ages and nations, religions have been doctrinal systems (Lehrgebäude) which demanded absolute approval, called secret doubt criminal, punished denial, and generally wanted to be treated with caution and favoritism.” 115

Religions throughout the world and throughout time have, argued Diez, been absolute teachings which demand that one adopt certain systems of thought, punishing those that doubt and deny the teachings.

The methodology of religion, or the idea that one must adopt a complete system of thought without doubt, was highly suspect to Diez because of his support of Pyrrhonian skepticism (based on the school of Pyrrho of Elis, 365-275 BC), which held that “there was insufficient and inadequate evidence to determine if any knowledge was possible, and hence one

115 “Es hat sich aber die Freyheit zu denken und zu schreiben nirgend so theuer lösen müssen, als im Gebiet der Religion. Die Religionen sind fast in allen Jahrhunderten und unter allen Nationen Lehrgebäude gewesen, welche unbedingten Beifall foderten, geheimen Zweifel sträflich hießen, iede Läugnung ahndeten und überhaupt mit Behutsamkeit und Glimpf behandelt seyn wollten.“ Diez and Voigts, Frühe Schriften (1772-1784), 164.

ought to suspend judgment on all questions concerning knowledge.”116 Pyrrhonian skepticism was introduced to the German-speaking world through a German translation of David Hume’s

(1711-1776) Treatise of Human Nature, first published in German in 1755, and it became an important philosophical standpoint before Kant’s publication of The Critique of Pure Reason in

1781, one of whose main goal was to directly address Hume’s skepticism (Kant credited Hume in another work with waking him from his “dogmatic slumber”).117 Diez outlined his skeptical views in a letter to Mauvillon in 1774:

I gladly admit that I am not a skeptic in the sense that one cares to use this term. I use this name for myself only because it still fits best. The doubter does not decide absolutely, because he does not know on which side the truth is. I, however, am not searching for any truths, and deny that they exist or could exist. I set aside the distinctions that one makes between truth, error, bias, falsehood, etc. and bring everything back to the word “ideas” that everyone makes according to his nature. If one wants to retain certain terms, I say everything that anyone believes is truth, even if he believes that the Earth stands still, or that the thousand-year empire will come, or that there is no God. It all depends on that which he has already been convinced. In that from which I am convinced, I decide absolutely, it consists such in denial or affirmation and I do not doubt about in between. Therefore I do not present my sentences for absolute truth, and I am not surprised when others don’t envision the matter like that and don’t believe as I do; they would be of my opinion if they observed things from my standpoint and I would be of theirs if I was in their shoes and situation. 118

For Diez, all beliefs are relative and dependent on a person’s standpoint. People with different perspectives have different beliefs, and it is not possible to ascertain the truth, because one can

116 Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle, Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), xvii.

117 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 1783. For the reception of Hume in the German-speaking world, and his influence on Kant, see: Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem,’” Journal of the History of Philosophy 21, no. 2 (1983): 175- 193 and Paul Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant’s Response to Hume (Princeton University Press, 2008). Hume’s influence on Kant is a matter of debate; for an overview, see Guyer 23-26. See also

118 Mauvillon, Mauvillon’s Briefwechsel, 107-8.

only view the matter from his or her perspective. Thus, Diez argues, it is impossible to judge other’s claims as true or false. Instead, Diez labeled all of them “ideas” and recognized that he since he cannot know the truth, the search for it is futile.

Diez developed this into a political standpoint to support freedom of the press. In his

1781 publication Apologie zur Duldung und Pressfreiheit, he applied this to argue for freedom of the press. He wrote,

“What is Truth?” will remain the big question forever. It will probably never be resolved in any language nor brought to evidence. In all the nations that boast about Enlightenment (Aufklärung), I see man fighting against man about it. At one moment the forces are greater here; at another, they are greater over there. Yet the decisive voices cannot be heard as long as contradictory voices are silenced.119

Diez denigrated Aufklärung by saying it was just a claim made by some people, who instead of finding the truth, fight about it. Diez did not think that the truth could ever be known through the use of reason. Truth, to Diez, is simply a matter of opinion. Therein lies the foundation for freedom of the press – if the truth is not known, writers should be free to express their opinions.

The greatest opponent of freedom of thought for Diez was the Church, and he argued its influence on the state should greatly be curbed. Diez described the Church as “nothing other than a separate association of persons in the state that profess certain teachings and the same church service.”120 Since the Church is merely an “association,” it does not merit any kind of special treatment or undue influence on the state. Diez wrote, “Religion, as it has existed for centuries in

Germany, is nothing more than a philosophical opinion. And in matters of opinion, the state or the people cannot require any reverence from their fellow citizens or foreigners, because

119 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 168.

120 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 171. Although Diez does not cite him, this echoes John Locke’s description of the Church as a “voluntary society of men” in the Letter Concerning Toleration (1689).

everyone is responsible for his own opinions.”121 Since matters of opinion, including religion, are personal, they are not an essential part of civil society. Diez wrote:

Life, sustenance, freedom, honor and security of property comprise the purposes for which civil societies are united…It is completely different for belief, opinions and religions. No man can oblige himself to absolutely recognize the rules of another in belief and teaching, because he cannot possess the convictions that change with years, situations and circumstances.122

For Diez, religion does not play any role in civil society. The purpose of civil society is to protect basic human needs, which do not include beliefs and opinions. Since religion is merely an opinion, for Diez, it is not an essential part of civil society. Since the state should be based on the notion of civil society, religion should not play any role in the state. Diez wrote:

Religion cannot be seen as a matter of the state (Staatsache), because its teachings and services are not made for civil law (bürgerliche Gesezz). It is simply a moral institution (moralisches Institut) that is under the jurisdiction of every thinking mind and every friend of humanity.123

According to Diez, religion cannot play any role in law, since it is simply a belief system that individuals can choose to believe or not. Perhaps drawing from his own background in law, Diez argued that religion is outside of the jurisdiction of state law. Instead, religion is in the realm of individual conscience, which must be protected by freedom for all individuals. This, for Diez, is the justification of separation of Church and state.

Jonathan Israel describes Diez’s work as “the first major plea for comprehensive freedom of thought and press in central Europe.”124 Although two European nations (England, 1695 and

Denmark, 1770) had abolished royal censorship, freedom of the press remained controversial in

121 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 185.

122 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 170.

123 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 166.

124 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 188.

the German-speaking world, and Diez’s opinions were well out of the mainstream. A review of his Apologie zur Duldung und Pressfreiheit in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, possibly by

Friedrich Jacobi (1743-1819), supported Diez’s proposal of a free press but argued for necessary limits. He proposed that all books should be allowed to be printed but should be judged by a reviewer who would give them a stamp to indicate whether they were “worthy of print”

(druckwürdig). This would help distinguish the good books from the “many useless scribblings that are usually the consequence of freedom of the press.”125 Thus even among Enlightenment thinkers, Diez’s position on a free press was far from self-evident.

The Pantheism Controversy Lessing sparked another controversy after his death later that year (1781), which came be known as the Pantheism Controversy (Pantheismusstreit).126 The controversy, which historian

Frederick Beiser described as “the most significant intellectual event in late eighteenth-century

Germany,” began with an accusation by Friedrich Jacobi that Lessing was a Spinozist. 127

Spinoza’s system, outlined in his Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and the Ethics (1677), was highly controversial, because it argued for the oneness of God and Nature. This was seen by its supporters as the only rational way to view a higher power. Its detractors argued this was

125 Jacobi, “Apologie der Duldung und Preßfreyheit: Rezension,” Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, vol. 52 no. 2 (1783): 348-350. The author is listed as “A.L. Jacobi” in the “Index deutschsprachiger Zeitschriften 1750 – 1815” (Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (McGill-Queen’s Press, 1987). however the review itself is signed “F.” Given Friedrich Jacobi’s participation in similar Enlightenment debates, it is likely that wrote it.

126 For an overview of the Pantheism Controversy, see Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 684– 720.

127 Beiser, The Fate of Reason, 44. For an overview of the Pantheismusstreit, see Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790 (Oxford University Press, 2011), 684-720 and David Bell, Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (London: University of London, 1984), 71-93.

atheism, since Christian doctrine held that God created Nature and they remained separate. At the heart of the controversy was whether the Enlightenment leads to atheism, as its detractors charged. German intellectuals were divided in their support for Spinozism; key figures such as

Johann Goethe and Johann Herder supported Spinozism, while Friedrich Jacobi and Johann

Hamann rejected it.

Diez entered into the debate in 1783 with two works. The first, Spinoza über

Aberglauben und Denkfreyheit (Spinoza on Superstition and Freedom of Thought), was a translation of the Preface of Spinoza’s work Tractatus Theologico-Politicus from Latin to

German. He wrote that Spinoza’s work supports many of the ideas outlined in his Apologie zur

Duldung und Pressfreiheit, although he did not have it in front of him when he was writing it.128

Still Spinoza’s theological ideas did not resonate as much with him as his teachings on morality and freedom. Although Spinoza’s detractors accused him of atheism, Diez rejected the label and said Spinoza believed in the “true religion,” which, Steven Nadler describes as “a simple code of moral behavior accompanied by an understanding of what constitutes the best condition for a human being and how to achieve it.”129 This focus on ethics made Spinoza resonate with eighteenth-century German freemasonry.

Diez’s intervention in the Pantheism Controversy attempted to divert the conversation from Spinoza’s theological ideas towards his support of political freedom. He dismissed

Spinoza’s religious ideas as “nothing other than the world soul [Lat: anima mundi] that the ancient sages already honored before him – without the abuse of contemporaries.”130 He argued

128 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 322.

129 Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton University Press, 2011), 52.

130 Diez and Voigts, Frühe Schriften (1772-1784), 358.

that the debate should concentrate on Spinoza’s ideas about “this life” rather than on his theological notions, writing, “his teaching about God, which is almost the only one with which the Leibnizian and Wolffian schools and – one could say – almost all philosophes are engaged…is perhaps the one that helps or harms us the least.” 131 Instead, Diez argued, Spinoza’s ideas about morality, civil society, and freedom of thought should be the main focus. 132

Diez also wrote what could be seen as a hagiography of Spinoza, entitled Benedikt von

Spinoza nach Leben und Lehren (Benedict Spinoza According to His Life and Teachings). It begins with a physical description – “his light eyes gave way his thinking, enlightened mind” and moves on to his moral qualities: “he was lord of all his passions. One never saw him sad or happy.”133 His support of Spinoza was already clear from his previous work, where he wrote: “I undoubtedly count Benedikt von Spinoza among the greatest men who have ever lived on earth.”134 Diez’s intervention into the Spinoza debate was clearly on the side of the Spinozists; however, Diez tried to steer the debate away from Spinoza’s theological ideas towards Diez’s own political interest in freedom.

Jewish Emancipation

Religious toleration came to the forefront in a debate about the status of Jews in Prussian society. Although Frederick the Great’s reforms had given greater rights to a small, elite, minority of Jews, residence and employment was still restricted for the majority. 135 Prejudice

131 Ibid., 321.

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid., 347, 352.

134 Ibid., 321.

135 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 277.

against Jews was widespread; even Frederick the Great, lauded as an Enlightened monarch, believed that “their religion and traditions…rendered them so deficient in the qualities he desired to foster in Prussian society…that he thought it impossible to usefully integrate them into society or remove discriminatory barriers against them.”136

Habsburg emperor Joseph II’s Toleration Edict of 1781 lifted restrictions on Jews in the

Habsburg Empire and was seen by some in Prussia, including Foreign Minister Christian von

Dohm, as a potential model.137 At the advice of Moses Mendelssohn, Dohm published a work concerning the status of Jews in Prussia entitled Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden

(On the Civic Improvement of the Jews) in 1781. The work argued that Jews could be made

“useful” citizens through a state-sponsored system of “civic improvement” including civil rights, military service, and agricultural training. Dohm’s work combined two main themes in the

German Enlightenment: religious toleration and the education of citizens. As Jonathan Hess notes, “In outlining the civic improvement of the Jews, Dohm was proposing the rehabilitation of a largely poor and seemingly unproductive segment of society, voicing his faith in the power of a progressive state to transform the fabric of its citizenry.”138 The book sparked a debate in the

German-speaking world and, a year later, in France as well. Dohm published a second volume in

1783.

Diez published a direct response to Dohm’s work, titled Ueber Juden, in 1783. By that time the two men had been friends for about seven years.139 Diez went further than Dohm by

136 Ibid.

137 Ibid., 293.

138 Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 3.

139 Babinger, “Ein Orientalischer Berater Goethes,” 86.

arguing that the state needed full political freedom for Jews. Diez wrote, “The first step is none other than rulers and states declaring Judaism as a publicly registered religion that can expect the same rights and freedoms as other teachings.”140 This stemmed from Diez’s view of religion, already elucidated in the Apologia (1781): “According to nature, a person is not a member of any church or sect.”141 Religion is nothing but a system of beliefs chosen by individuals. The state should provide freedom of conscience by tolerating all religious beliefs as well as non- belief. He wrote, “The Jew doesn’t disturb society because he believes the New Testament is not divine, and the apostate who doubts the divinity of both Testaments doesn’t bother [society] either.”142 Jonathan Hess described Diez’s work as more radical than Dohm’s:

[Dohm] expressed a relative tolerance of Judaism that was rare, surpassed perhaps only by that of his contemporary Heinrich Diez…who suggested in an open letter to Dohm in 1783 that the first step in civic improvement would be granting Judaism, as a religion, complete equal rights in the state. Diez, a harsher critic of historical religion than Dohm, argued that Jews would certainly be able to transform Judaism into a religion of reason more quickly than Christians, who have needed 1,800 years to put their house in order.143

Diez’s religious notion of deism informed his support of toleration and, in turn, equal rights for Jews. He attacked Christian confessions by arguing that Jews have a better chance of reconciling faith and reason than Christians. Diez also critiqued anti-Semitism in Christianity as an impediment to Enlightenment. He wrote, “It would be a shame for our age -- which so often boasts about its own enlightenment – if barbarism should continue that were spun in the darkness

140 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 308.

141 Heinrich Diez, Ueber Juden: An Herrn Kriegsrath Dohm in Berlin, (Dessau: Buchhandlung der Gelehrten, 1783).

142 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 166.

143 Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity, 35.

of superstition. Hatred against Jews is certainly the oldest found in history.”144 This echoed

Dohm’s work, which stated, “The policy is a remnant of the barbarism of past centuries.”145

Restrictions on Jews are, for both men, a product of pre-Enlightenment Christian anti-Semitism and they should be removed.

Conclusion

Heinrich von Diez contributed to key debates of the German Enlightenment while he was a young man in his twenties and thirties (1772-1784). Beginning with his first publication supporting secret societies in 1772, while he was still a student at the University of Halle, Diez advocated a form of enlightenment based on freemasonry. His notion of enlightenment as illumination, resting firmly on moral philosophy, shared similarities to Illuminati writers such as

Adam Weishaupt and Karl Leonard Reinhold. Diez’s views were also informed by a commitment to Pyrrhonism, the skeptical position whether any knowledge is possible at all.

Diez envisioned an increasingly free society built upon his ideas of moral philosophy and secret societies, and he joined major debates in the German Enlightenment to express his views.

Diez’s participation in Enlightenment debates and this development of a network of political connections led to a diplomatic appointment in Istanbul. Dohm, who by this time worked in the Prussian Foreign Ministry, alerted Diez that a position in Istanbul for the Prussian chargé d’affaires was opening up and arranged an audience with Frederick the Great for him in

1784. Frederick, who was quite familiar with Diez’s work, appointed him the Prussian chargé d'affaires to the Sublime Porte in 1784. Diez departed to Istanbul later that year.

144 Diez, Frühe Schriften, 306.

145 Qtd. in Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 122.

Diez continued his philosophical engagement in Istanbul (see Chapter 2), where he learned Ottoman. Unlike most European diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, who relied on translators, Diez’s language ability allowed him to participate in Istanbul’s intellectual community. He developed a connection to the Galata Mevlevihanesi, an Ottoman intellectual center located near European embassies in Istanbul. Through his language ability and connection to the lodge, Diez continued to explore concepts of illumination rooted in Sufism and Islamic philosophy. He pursued this interest by amassing a large collection of Ottoman manuscripts in

Istanbul, bringing them back to Berlin, where he began a career in translating and publishing.

Chapter 2: Sufism and European Diplomacy in Istanbul

When Heinrich Diez arrived in Istanbul on July 16, 1784, he was what historians

Margaret Jacob and Jonathan Israel have described as an Enlightenment “radical” (Jacob 2006;

Israel 2001). He lived in Pera, a section of Istanbul east of the Golden Horn where the European embassies were located. Nestled between the Russian and Swedish embassies on the Grande

Rue de Péra (also known as Cadde-i Kebir; today’s İstiklal Caddesi), the major street in Pera, was the Galata Mevlevihanesi, which predated the European embassies by a several centuries. It was the oldest Mevlevi lodge in Istanbul and a center for the Mevlevi order, which traced its spiritual lineage (silsile) to the mystic Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-73). At some point during his stay in Istanbul, Diez crossed through the large gate separating the lodge from the street of

European embassies into a large complex with a cemetery (hamuşan; lit: “silent ones”), fountain, kitchen and living quarters for the shaykh and dervishes. In the middle of the complex was the semahane, a wooden building where dervishes practiced rituals including sema (lit: “listening”; whirling), which Diez might have viewed through a wooden lattice screen from a box on the second-floor reserved for visitors.

What made a committed freemason and Enlightenment thinker like Diez enter the Galata

Mevlevihanesi’s gate? This chapter examines the relationship between Ottoman-European diplomacy, Sufism, and knowledge transmission in the eighteenth century. It contextualizes

Diez’s experience with the Mevlevi Lodge within a larger framework of European-Ottoman diplomacy, knowledge collecting, and a relationship between freemasonry and the

Enlightenment. It begins with Diez’s diplomatic mission in Istanbul, which places Prussia in a larger system of European imperial rivalry. It then examines the role of Mevlevi lodges in

Ottoman politics, positioning them within a larger system of Ottoman-European relations.

Lastly, it examines the history of European visitors to the Galata Mevlevihanesi and a longer relationship between Sufism and freemasonry.

The historical sources related to connections between Europeans and Mevlevis are difficult to trace. In 1925, the newly founded Turkish Republic confiscated the buildings of the

Galata Mevlevihanesi upon banning all Sufi orders and it was eventually turned into a museum.

Documents in its extensive library, the Halet Efendi Kütüphanesi (Halet Efendi Library), were either confiscated by the state or taken into unknown private collections. The confiscated documents have been recently consolidated in the Halet Efendi and the Galata Mevlevihanesi

Collections of the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul.146 However, additional documents are not publicly available and have either been destroyed or remain in private archives. In addition, there are inherent methodological issues in studying membership-based organizations who rely on extensive oral traditions.147 This chapter draws from three letters in Diez’s personal collection, which are (to my knowledge) the only remaining, publicly accessible documents of Diez’s involvement with the Galata Mevlevihanesi. Mevlevi lodges kept extensive membership (defter-i dervişan) and visitor records, although I was unable to find the records for the Galata

146 A review of both collections, as well as other materials, did not result in any additional sources related to Diez or eighteenth century European travelers. The collections consist of mostly religious, philosophical and literary treatises. There are some letter and note collections (mektubat and mecmua-i münşeat) and membership records (defter-i dervişan) for other lodges and time periods, but I did not find anything related to Diez for the time he was associated with the Lodge. It is probable that these records were not preserved, destroyed, or remain in private archives. A fuller picture could emerge in the future as more archival records are added.h

147 Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (Chicago: Aldine Publishers, 1965); Hassimi Oumarou Maiga, Balancing Written History with Oral Traditions: The Legacy of the Songhoy People (New York: Routledge, 2009).

Mevlevihanesi for this period. 148 Thus this chapter relies heavily on secondary literature to contextualize the few documents that were available by drawing upon works related to European diplomacy, Ottoman military reform, and Sufism to explain the findings of these three letters in

Diez’s personal collection.

Pera: Microcosm of European Imperial Rivalries and Collecting

The state of peace among men living in close proximity is not the natural state (status naturalis); instead, the natural state is a one of war, which does not just consist in open hostilities, but also the constant and enduring threat of them. 149 - Immanuel Kant, 1795

When Diez arrived in Pera in 1784, war loomed large on the minds of Ottoman and

European officials. The rise of the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great (r. 1762-96) threatened the balance of power in Europe and threatened Ottoman territory. Just the year before

Diez arrived, Russia annexed the Crimea, and there was talk of a coming war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The last war with Russia, ending in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in

1774, had been disastrous for the Ottoman state.150 The treaty included three major blows to

Ottoman sovereignty: 1) Russia became the official protector of Orthodox Christians living in the Ottoman Empire; 2) the Ottoman Empire ceded two ports, Azov and Kerch, which allowed the Russian naval access to the Black Sea; and 3) the Ottoman state was forced to cede the

148 For example, a surviving copy of the Yenikapı Mevlevi Lodge records was published in Bayram Ali Kaya, Defter-i Dervişan (Istanbul: Zeytinburnu Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2011). I did not have a chance to review the central museum in Konya (Mevlana Müzesi), and it is possible some records might be there.

149 Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 111.

150 For an overview of Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian territorial competition, see: Alfred Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Crimea, a strategic province on the Black Sea, as an independent state, and it fell under the

Russian sphere of influence.

Emboldened by victory at Küçük Kaynarca, Catherine the Great envisioned a “Greek project” which would partition the Ottoman Empire and bring a large part of it under Russian control.151 She aimed to replace the Ottoman Empire with an Orthodox Christian state called

Dacia, and her strategy was to gain access to the Mediterranean by acquiring sea ports on the

Black Sea (needing also rights to pass through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits). She courted the Austrian emperor Joseph II to join her plan, which he did in order to share territorial gains in the Balkans. Habsburg Foreign Minister Anton Kaunitz also saw an alliance with Russia as a safeguard against Prussian designs on Central Europe. 152

The rise of Russia was a threat to the balance of power in Europe for two main reasons.

First, it increased territorial competition over Poland, one of the largest territories in Europe at the time. Poland bordered Prussia, the Habsburg Empire, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. It was an attractive territory for all of these powers as a site for expansion and as a buffer against the others. The earlier Ottoman-Russian war had started over increasing Russian domination of

Polish territory. Second, Russian expansion also concerned British interests, because it threatened routes to colonial holdings in India and dominance in Central Asia. In addition,

Prussia, whose territory had rapidly expanded under Frederick the Great, was also in competition with the Habsburg Empire for domination of the German lands (German dualism). Prussia and

Great Britain allied against Russia and Austria, which they viewed as a much greater threat than

151 D. S. Margoliouth, “Turkish Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century,” The Muslim World 7, no. 1 (January 1, 1917), 38.

152Karl A. Roider, “Kaunitz, Joseph II and the Turkish War,” The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Oct 1976), pp. 538-556

the Ottoman Empire.153 European states sought to advance their interests in the wake of what they saw as weakening Ottoman power in what would become known as the “Eastern Question.”

A system of alliances was set into motion with the Ottoman declaration of war on Russia in

August 1787.

Prussia also viewed the war as an opportunity to increase prestige through an alliance with the Ottoman state. As “Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of his Prussian Majesty at the Court of Constantinople,” Diez’s task in Istanbul was to advance Prussian interests in the

Eastern Question. He addressed this in his first diplomatic report, writing that the Ottoman

Empire was tottering on the verge of collapse and would be dominated by Russia within the next ten years. 154 When Ottoman officials proposed an alliance in 1787, Diez maintained it was

Prussia’s opportunity to play a major role in European politics.155 His superiors in Berlin could not afford to let the Empire collapse; they viewed the Ottomans as a bulwark against Russian imperial expansion. Although Prussia did not have overseas colonies at the time, Prussia’s interest in the Ottoman Empire during this time could be seen as a type of “informal” imperialism.156

Diez had a difficult mission: his superiors in the Prussian Foreign Ministry wanted to negotiate a treaty without offering anything to the Ottoman side. Namely, the goal was to have

Prussia to represent the Ottoman Empire at any peace negotiations with Austria and Russia and

153 Virginia Aksan, Ottoman wars 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged (Harlow, England: Longman/Pearson, 2007).

154 D. S Margoliouth, “Turkish Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century,” The Muslim World 7, no. 1 (January 1, 1917): 46.

155 Ibid., 47.

156 Illich, “German Imperialism in the Ottoman Empire.”

to then leverage that position to gain territory in Poland. 157 Prussia also wanted a favorable commercial treaty and protection for its shipping companies in the Mediterranean. 158 The

Ottoman side agreed to these terms under the condition that Prussia would enter the war and fight Russia and Austria until the Crimea and all other Ottoman territories were recovered. 159

Prussia was prepared to fight Austria, but not Russia. 160

In the end, Diez agreed that Prussia would enter the war in support of the Ottoman

Empire in order to secure the alliance treaty, which was ratified in January 1791. However, Diez was not authorized by Berlin to make this concession, since the Prussian government did not want to contribute any troops to the war with Russia. His superiors recalled him to Berlin in 1791 for overstepping his authority, and he was given a pension and released from further government service. In response, the Sublime Porte sent an ambassador, Ahmed Azmi Efendi (d. 1821), to

Berlin to pressure Prussia to join the war and fight until the Ottoman Empire regained Crimea.

Nothing came of this, however, as the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II quickly ended the war with the Ottoman Empire in August 1791, shortly after his sister, Marie Antoinette (1755-93), fled the

French palace with her husband Louis XVI (1754-1793) as the result of the French Revolution.

European ambassadors collected material culture from the Ottoman Empire within this system of European imperial rivalry. Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier, the

French ambassador from 1784-1792, collected Greek antiquities, some of which are now in the

Louvre. The British ambassador from 1776-1794, Sir Robert Ainslie, amassed a large collection

157 Margoliouth, “Turkish Diplomacy in the Eighteenth Century,” 48.

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid., 50.

160 Ibid., 51.

of coins in Istanbul as well as antiquities and drawings. His replacement, Lord Elgin, famously removed what became known as the “Elgin Marbles” from the Parthenon during his mission as

British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799-1803. Habsburg diplomat Joseph von

Hammer also collected manuscripts while in diplomatic service in the Ottoman Empire.161

Diez used his diplomatic mission to collect hundreds of Ottoman manuscripts in

Istanbul. His diplomatic position enabled manuscript collection in two ways. First, Diez made a small fortune in Istanbul by selling Prussian passports and licenses of privilege (berats), which funded his manuscript collection.162 Second, Diez used political connections to acquire new items. For example, Diez purchased manuscripts from the Ottoman palace when the harem relocated upon the succession of Sultan Selim III in 1789, and the transaction was brokered through a palace servant who was aware of Diez’s collecting activities.163 Diez collected hundreds of Ottoman manuscripts over the course of his six-year stay in Istanbul, including a significant amount of Sufi material such as philosophical treatises and hymns (see Chapter 3).

Diez learned Turkish in Istanbul, which was rare for European envoys, which gave him further access to Ottoman literary, religious, and philosophical knowledge.

The Galata Mevlevihanesi and Ottoman Politics

Recent scholarship about the history of Sufism reconsiders the notion of Sufis as marginal figures and examines their relation to structures of political power.164 This is especially

161 See Caroline Finkel, “Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s English Translation of the First Books of Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatnâme,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, no. 1 (2015): 43–6.

162 Gronau, Christian Wilhelm von Dohm Nach Seinem Wollen Und Handeln, 113.

163 David J. Roxburgh, “Heinrich Friedrich Von Diez and His Eponymous Albums: Mss. Diez A. Fols. 70-74,” Muqarnas 12 (January 1, 1995): 113, doi:10.2307/1523227.

164 See Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), 5. For an historiographical overview of Sufism, see: Nile Green, “Making Sense of ‘Sufism’ in the Indian

relevant in the Ottoman context, where Sufi orders were connected to the Ottoman state’s major institutions.165 Sufism played a crucial role in the founding of the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman founding myth held that Osman, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, saw the rule of his family in a dream interpreted by a Sufi shaykh.166 Many of the 36 Ottoman sultans in the over 600 years of Ottoman history were affiliated with a Sufi order. The Ottoman court often supported the

Mevlevi order as a balance against the major military force, the Janissary corps, who were associated with the Bektashi order.167

Subcontinent: A Survey of Trends,” Religion Compass 2, no. 6 (2008): 1044-1061 and Alexander Knysh, “Historiography of Sufi Studies in the West,” A Companion to the History of the Middle East, ed. Youssef M. Choueiri (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005): 106-134. In the last ten years, several books have been published about the relationship between Ottoman politics and Sufism, although nothing on the eighteenth century. See: Dina Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandīs in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005); John J. Curry, The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire: The Rise of the Halvetî Order, 1350-1650 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010); Zeynep Yürekli, Architecture and Hagiography in the Ottoman Empire: The Politics of Bektashi Shrines in the Classical Age (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2012). For the end of the Empire, see: Hülya Küçük, The Role of the Bektās̲h̲ īs in Turkey’s National Struggle (Leiden: Brill, 2002).Hülya Küçük, The Role of the Bektāshīs in Turkey’s National Struggle (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

165 The relationship between the early modern state and Sufism was strong throughout the Islamic world. See, for example: Nile Green, Indian Sufism Since the Seventeenth Century: Saints, Books and Empires in the Muslim Deccan (New York: Routledge, 2006); Blain H. Auer, “Intersections Between Sufism and Power: Narrating the Shaykhs and Sultans of Northern India, 1200-1400,” in Sufism and Society: Arrangements of the Mystical in the Muslim World, 1200- 1800, eds. John J. Curry and Erik S. Ohlander (New York: Routledge, 2012), 17-33.

166 For a description of the dream, see: Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 8. For the importance of dreams in Islam, see: Nile Green, “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, no. 3 (2003): 287-313; Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh (eds), Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012).

167 Küçük, The Role of the Bektās̲h̲ īs in Turkey’s National Struggle.

There were historically two centers of power within the Mevlevi order. First, the Çelebi family, who were the hereditary heirs of Rumi, held leadership over the asitane-i ‘aliye (grand lodge), which was located about 600 kilometers southeast in the central Anatolian city of Konya.

Second, the shaykhs of the Istanbul Mevlevi lodges often passed the leadership of the lodges from father to son, which created its own center of power. For example, the Musa Safi Dede family headed the Kasımpaşa Mevlevihanesi from 1744-1786 (with two exceptions) and the

Galata Mevlevihanesi from 1760-1778.168 The Ebubekir Dede family led the Yenikapı

Mevlevihanesi from 1775 to its last shaykh, Abdülbaki Dede, who died in 1935. These families often allied with the Ottoman court, which was also based in Istanbul, and this sometimes put them at odds with the central leadership of the Mevlevi order, led by the Çelebi family, in

Konya.

Istanbul Mevlevi lodges were at the forefront of the adoption of European print and military technology in the Ottoman Empire in two ways. First, the Kasımpaşa Mevlevihanesi helped establish the first Muslim printing press in the Ottoman Empire in 1724 by Ibrahim

Müteferrika.169 Although this press was only in operation until 1745, and a tradition of Muslim printing did not start until around 1820, it was significant while it was in operation for the

168 For a list of shaykhs of the Istanbul Mevlevi lodges, and their relationships to the notable shaykh families, see: Ekrem Işın, Saltanatın dervişleri dervişlerin saltanatı: İstanbul’da Mevlevîlik. (Istanbul: Istanbul Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2007), 272.

169 The Greek, Armenian and Jewish millets already had printing presses. For a description of the press, see: Vefa Erginbaş, “Enlightenment in the Ottoman Context: Ibrahim Müteferrika and his Intellectual Landscape,” Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East, ed. Geoffrey Roper (Leiden: Brill, 2013): 53-100 and Maurits H. van de Boogert, “The Sultan’s Answer to the Medici Press? Ibrahim Müteferrika’s Printing House in Istanbul,” in The Republic of Letters and the Levant, eds. Alastair Hamilton, Maurits H. Van Den Boogert, Bart Westerweel (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 265-289.

development of Ottoman military reform.170 The press published seventeen titles related to military-political matters.171 Müteferrika was assisted by the shaykh of Kasımpaşa

Mevlevihanesi, Mevlana Musa.172 Müteferrika’s connection to Istanbul Mevlevi lodges demonstrates their significant role in eighteenth-century Ottoman reforms.

Second, two leaders of eighteenth-century Ottoman military reform are buried in the

Galata Mevlevihanesi’s cemetery: Ibrahim Müteferrika (1670-1745), a Hungarian convert who founded the first Muslim printing press in the Ottoman Empire, and Count Bonneval (1675-

1747), a French convert who served as an advisor to the Ottoman military.173 Bonneval, who adopted the name Kumbaracı (bombardier) Ahmet Paşa, was a French military advisor hired in

1731 to reorganize the Ottoman army. He was supposed to increase the Corps of Bombadiers

(Humbaracı Ocağı) from 300 to 10,000 under the sultan’s orders; however, due to opposition he was unable to succeed.174 He established a school of military engineering in 1734 and a school of mathematics (hendesehane) in addition to making changes to the existing cannon foundry

170 For the development of Muslim printing in the early nineteenth century, see Nile Green, “Journeymen, Middlemen: Travel, Transculture, and Technology in the Origins of Muslim Printing,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 203-224. For a history of the development of Ottoman printing, see: Orlin Sabev, “Waiting for Godot: The Formation of Ottoman Print Culture,” Historical Aspects of Printing and Publishing in Languages of the Middle East, ed. Geoffrey Roper (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 101-120.

171 Rieber, 254. For a translation of documents related to Ottoman printing, see George Atiyeh (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World: The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York, 1995), 283-292.

172 Erginbas, 84.

173 Müteferrika’s grave was originally in Kasımpaşa. See: Mahmud Es’ad Coşan, Risâle-i İslâmiyye: Matbaacı İbrahim-i Müteferrika (Istanbul: Server İletişim, 2010). His grave was moved to the Galata Mevlevi Lodge in 1942.

174 Levy, 232.

(tophane), powdermill (baruthane), arsenal (cebhane), mining corps (lağımcı), and artillery transport (arabacı).175

The connections between military reform and the Mevlevi order culminated in the reign of Selim III (r. 1789-1807), who ascended the throne during Diez’s mission in Istanbul and was himself a Mevlevi. During his reign, he instituted an ambitious reform program called Nizam-ı

Cedid (New Order).176 The Nizam-ı Cedid encompassed wide-sweeping reforms of military and government administration, including the establishment of a new European-style military corps and a stronger navy.177 The military was to be funded by administrative reform, which saw increased centralization and the creation of a New Treasury (Irad- ı Cedid). This coincided with an increase in state surveillance and policing of Istanbul.178

The creation of a new army was at the center of Nizam-ı Cedid. The new corps was to supplement the Ottoman army, composed of cavalry (sipahi) and Janissaries, rather than replace

175 Levy, 232.

176 Despite the criticism of the decline approach, a revisionist history of the Nizam-ı Cedid has yet to be published. The main work in English remains: Stanford Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire Under Sultan Selim III, 1789-1807 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). There are, however, several recent unpublished dissertations which address Selim III’s reign: Kahraman Sakul, “An Ottoman Global Moment: War of Second Coalition in the Levant.” PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2009; Ali Yaycıoğlu, “The Provincial Challenge: Regionalism, Crisis, and Integration in the Late Ottoman Empire (1792-1812).” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2008; Aysel Danacı Yıldız, “Vaka-yı Selimiyye or the Selimiyye Incident: A Study of the May 1807 Rebellion.” PhD dissertation, Sabancı University, 2008.

177 A translation of an Ottoman account of Nizam-ı Cedid, written by Çelebi Mustafa Reşid Efendi, can be found in: William Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (London: Longman, 1820), 216-294.

178 Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century: Between Crisis and Order (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Despite introducing many new sources and critiquing the decline approach, this book does not offer an alternative theoretical underpinning.

it. 179 Over time, as the new army became more established, the plan was to extend the reforms to the Janissary corps as well.180 Beginning in 1793, French military advisors trained the new army with European weapons, uniforms, and troop formation. By 1801, there were 27 officers and about 9,263 soldiers. Conscription was introduced in Anatolia in 1802. The new army rapidly expanded; by 1806, there were 1,590 officers and 22,685 soldiers. Half were in Istanbul and the other half in Anatolia.181 Efforts were also made to improve the naval fleet, and the

Sublime Porte built 45 modern warships as part of the reform.

Military reform required bureaucratic reform to centralize administration and levy more income for the state. The Ottoman state established a new treasury, Irad- ı Cedid, (“New

Revenue”), funded by state-held tax farms (iltizams).182 In 1797-8, the New Revenue equaled to

60,000 purses, which was approximately 48 million francs.183 Selim III also implemented tax reforms which made foreign merchants pay at least three percent in customs taxes and decreased the number of subjects European embassies could take under their protection (thus avoiding taxes).184

Ottoman diplomats in Europe played a large role in gathering ideas for the reforms. As part of his mission in Berlin from 1790-1, Azmi Efendi also reported on Prussian military and

179 F. Babinger and C.E. Bosworth, “Niẓām-I̊ Ḏj̲ edīd.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, 2014. (Original volume published in 1995).

180 F. Babinger and C.E. Bosworth, “Niẓām-I̊ Ḏj̲ edīd.”

181 F. Babinger and C.E. Bosworth, “Niẓām-I̊ Ḏj̲ edīd.” 182 Shaw, 129.

183 F. Babinger and C.E. Bosworth, “Niẓām-I̊ Ḏj̲ edīd.” 184 Shaw, 178.

administrative practices. Azmi noted in his embassy report that European states gained advantage through trade rather than war. 185 He argued that the wars for land of previous eras were now a waste of resources, because they result in gaining territory that would only be lost again in the next war.186 Rather than keep a military for territorial expansion, Azmi argued, a strong military was needed as a deterrent. 187 For him, Prussia was an example of a state that used this strategy, as it spent over half of its revenues on the military.188 Selim increased

Ottoman diplomatic presence by establishing permanent embassies in four European capitals:

London (1793), Paris (1795), Vienna (1795), and Berlin (1795).189

Selim III often chose Ottoman officials with diplomatic experience as his advisors for military reform. For example, Ebubekir Ratib Efendi, Ottoman ambassador to the Habsburg court from 1791-2, offered a comprehensive reform program upon his return from Vienna, based on his observations there.190 He was later promoted to Reis ül-Küttab (foreign affairs advisor) from 1795-6. He was reported to also have offered palace pages informal French lessons, which is surprising because there is no known European-language instruction in the Ottoman bureaucracy during this time. 191 Mahmud Raif Efendi, the chief scribe of the first Ottoman

185 Otto Müller, Azmi Efendis Gesandschaftsreise an den preussischen Hof (Kiel: Schmidt, 1918), 70.

186 Müller, Azmi Efendis Gesandschaftsreise, 69.

187 Müller, Azmi Efendis Gesandschaftsreise, 70.

188 Müller, Azmi Efendis Gesandschaftsreise, 75.

189 They only lasted a couple years due to the expense.

190Ebubekir Ratib Efendi, Büyük Lâyiha, Süleymaniye Library, Esad Efendi Collection, Ms. Nr. 2235.

191 Dallaway, 43.

ambassador to England, Yusuf Aga Efendi, stayed for several years in England, beginning in

1793 for education. He was later named Reis ül-Küttab from 1800-1805.192 Thus, during this period, a link between diplomatic service in Europe, education, and promotion within the

Ottoman bureaucracy was formed.

Although Selim III is most remembered for his military reforms and Nizam-ı Cedid, he also sponsored a revival of Mevlevi Sufism. He supported the architectural restoration of the

Galata Mevlevihanesi, as well as other Mevlevi lodges throughout the Empire, and acted as patron to several well-known poets of the lodge.193 He also established foundations for Mesnevi instruction. 194 During this time, joining the Mevlevi order became a way to access jobs or favors from court.195

Mevlevi lodges in Istanbul served as cultural centers for poetry, music, and calligraphy.

Mevlevis are known for their practice of sema, which includes turning, and they became known to European travelers as the “whirling dervishes.” Mevlevi lodges also became sites of musical training and production. Persian poetry was also central to Mevlevi practice, and members copied and translated works of Persian poetry into Ottoman Turkish, most notably Rumi’s

Mesnevi. Tied to the production of manuscripts, the lodges also became centers of calligraphy

(hüsn-i hat) and offered training in this art form.

192 Shaw, 89.

193 E. J. W. Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, ed. Edward G. Browne, Vol. 4 (London: Luzac & Co, 1905), 179.

194 Talat Halman, Rapture and Revolution: Essays on Turkish Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 281.

195 Halmann, 281.

The Galata Mevlevihanesi enjoyed a special patronage under Selim III’s rule. Selim III was a disciple (mürid; lit. “aspirant”) of Galib Dede (1757-1799), who was the shaykh of the lodge. Galib Dede’s father was a government clerk who was also associated with the Mevlevi order.196 Galib Dede was a disciple of Ali Nutke Dede (d. 1804), whose family (the Ebubekir

Dede family) dominated the leadership of the Yenikapı Mevlevihanesi until its closing in

1925.197 Galib Dede was appointed shaykh of the Galata Mevlevi Lodge in 1790/1 (1205 H).198

After Selim III heard of Galib’s appointment to the Galata Mevlevihanesi, he ordered a restoration of the building. 199 The politics of patronage played out in the literary sphere: Galib thanked him through a poem of praise and then Selim III praised Galib in his poetry collection.200

Poetry flourished in the Galata Mevlevihanesi under Selim III’s patronage during this time. Shaykh Galib wrote Beauty and Love (Hüsn ü Aşk) during this time, which is considered to be the greatest work in Ottoman literature of all time.201 Two other well-known poets also flourished at the Galata Mevlevihanesi under Selim III’s patronage: Mehmed Esrar Dede (d.

196 Gibb, Ottoman Poetry, 176. His name is also transliterated as Galip.

197 Işın, 31. He completed his 1,001 days of çile at the Yenikapı lodge (Gibb, 178).

198 Gibb, 178.

199 Gibb, 179.

200 Gibb, 179.

201 See: Gibb, 195 and Şeyh Galip, Beauty and Love, trans. Victoria Rowe Holbrook (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2005), ix. For a transliteration of the work, see: Şeyh Galip, Hüsn ü Aşk, ed. Victoria Rowe Holbrook (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2005). For English translations of Galib’s other works, see: Walter G. Andrews, Najaat Black and Mehmet Kalpaklı (trans. and eds.), Ottoman Lyric Poetry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 149-154.

1796/7; 1211H) and Hülüsi Dede (d. 1805/6; 1220H).202 As with military matters, Selim’s reign represented a transition period in the literary arts. This era is known as the last of the “Old

School of Ottoman Literature,” as European works began to exert a greater influence on Ottoman literature in the nineteenth century. 203

Poetry, like other cultural aspects of the lodge, was firmly tied to political issues. Selim

III wrote poetry and Mevlevi music under the pseudonym Ilhami. Some of his poetry dealt with the war with Russia and the loss of the Crimea. Shaykh Galib’s work also included treatment of political matters, including several poems about Selim III’s renovation of the gunpowder factory.204 These examples highlight the considerable overlap between Ottoman high culture, expressed through literature, and politics in the Galata Mevlevihanesi.

The closeness of Istanbul Mevlevi lodges to the court caused a rift with the Mevlevi central administration in Konya during Nizam-ı Cedid. 205 The split reflected a larger divide between the Istanbul shaykh families, who supported the sultan and reforms, and central Mevlevi administration based in Konya. 206 This came to the forefront when religious endowments

(evkaf) were being centralized, and the major source of income for the Mevlevi order, the Evkaf-ı

202 For more information, see Gibb, 207.

203 Gibb, 175. See also: Victoria Rowe Holbrook, The Unreadable Shores of Love: Turkish Modernity and Mystic Romance (University of Texas Press, 1994); Victoria Rowe Holbrook, “The Intellectual and the State: Poetry in Istanbul in the 1790’s,” Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, 18 (79), no. 1 (1999): 233–51.

204 Fatih Usluer, “Şeyh Galib’in Baruthane Şiirleri.” Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi 1/3 (2008): 411–423.

205 Ekrem Işın, “The Mevlevi Order in Istanbul: Socio-Historic Notes on an Imperial Sufi Order,” in Saltanatın dervişleri dervişlerin saltanatı: İstanbul’da Mevlevîlik, ed. Ekrem Işın (Istanbul: Istanbul Araştırmaları Enstitüsü, 2007): 36.

206 Işın, 32.

Celaliyye, was placed under the control of the palace. 207 As a result, the head of the Mevlevi order, Mehmed Çelebi (r.1785-1815) organized a small-scale rebellion against Selim III in

Konya in 1804. As a Mevlevi himself, Selim III pretended to ignore this issue.

The most well known statesman connected to the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Selim III’s time was Mehmed Sait Halet Efendi (1761-1822). He was the ambassador to Paris from 1803-

1806, which was arguably the most important ambassadorial position, since Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt had disrupted the Franco-Ottoman alliance. Halet Efendi was connected to many members of the Galata Mevlevihanesi, including Shaykh Galip and the poet Keçecizade İzzet

Molla (1786-1829), who was one of his closest friends.208 His large collection of books was left to the Galata Mevlevihanesi, and the library of the lodge came to be known as the Halet Efendi

Library (Halet Efendi Kütüphanesi).209 His career exemplifies how the lodge was connected to state service and relations with European nations during the court of Selim III.

The Galata Mevlevihanesi’s European Visitors

European travelers visited the Galata Mevlevihanesi beginning in the seventeenth century. The painter Jean-Baptiste Vanmour, employed by the French embassy in Istanbul, painted a picture of dervishes in the Galata Mevlevihanesi in the early eighteenth century.210 An engraving of dervishes at the Galata Mevlevihane, originally titled “The Dervishes in their

207 Işın, 34.

208Naci Okçu, “Keçecizâde Izzet Molla,” in İslam Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: TDV İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 2001), vol. 23, 561-563 and Abdülkadir Özcan, “Halet Efendi,” in İslam Ansiklopedisi. (Istanbul: TDV İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1997), vol. 15, 249-251.

209 For more information about the collection, see: Ismail E. Erünsal, “Halet Efendi Kütüphanesi” in Islam Ansiklopedisi. (Istanbul: TDV İslâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 1997), vol. 15, 251.

210 Painting reproduced in {Citation}Raymond Lifchez, “Lodges of Istanbul,” The Dervish Lodge, ed. Raymond Lifchez (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 110.

Temple at Pera, Having Just Finished Whirling” is included in the monumental work Religious

Ceremonies of the World (Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde), first published from 1723-43.211 Joseph Hammer reported that the lodge held services at noon on

Tuesdays and Fridays, which “drew the attention of all travelers and oftentimes the inhabitants of

Pera [themselves].”212

In addition to being located in Galata, one of the reasons the lodge attracted so much

European attention was that it was one of the only Muslim spaces of worship open to Europeans.

Since Europeans were banned from entering mosques without the permission of the sultan, Sufi lodges were one of the few spaces European travelers in the Ottoman Empire could observe

Muslim religious practices. The physician for the British Embassy during Diez’s time, James

Dallaway (1763-1834), reports that the Galata Mevlevihanesi was “easily inspected even by

Franks (Europeans), who are rigorously excluded from attending any other kind of

Mohammedan worship.”213

Drawing from European travel reports to the Ottoman Empire, early Enlightenment thinkers saw a link between Sufism and deism. In their work on the Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt discuss how some Enlightenment thinkers saw parallels between these two philosophies. In the

211 Lynn Avery Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and W. W. Mijnhardt. {Citation}The Book That Changed Europe: Picart & Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 257.

212 Joseph Hammer-Purgstall, Constantinopolis und der Bosporos. vol. 1. (Pest: Hartleben, 1822), 121.

213 Dallaway, James. Constantinople Ancient and Modern: With Excursions to the Shores and Islands of the Archipelago and to the Troad. T. Cadell, junr. & W. Davies, 1797, 128-9.

volume on Islam, Bernard (1683-1744) implicitly drew a comparison between Islam and “the

Spinozists and Deists of Europe.” 214

Diez established a connection to the shaykh of the Galata Mevlevihanesi, Numan Halil

Dede (1691-1798), while he was in Istanbul. Numan Dede was born with connections to the

Ottoman palace; his father, Yiğit Ali Paşa, was a vizier.215 He completed his çile (1,001-day novitiate) at the grand lodge in Konya and was appointed shaykh of the Galata Mevlevihanesi on

November 23, 1786 (2 Safer 1201 H). He served for four years before being dismissed in

1790/1791 AD (1205 H) and replaced by Seyh Galip.216 Diez took one of Numan Dede’s disciples, Tahir Bey, with him to Berlin, who wrote Diez a letter upon his departure back to

Istanbul. This section documents Diez’s relationship to the lodge through these three letters between Diez and members of the Galata Mevlevihanesi. These letters have not yet been discussed in secondary literature, although they are available in Diez’s literary estate (Nachlass) in Berlin.217

Diez described Numan as his “friend,” and it appears Numan might have taught Diez some Ottoman Turkish. 218 Diez later recounted a conversation he had with Numan Dede, describing how Numan Dede explained an Ottoman word to him, which he recorded in his

214 Book that Changed Europe, 256.

215 Sezai Küçük, Mevleviliğin Son Yüzyılı (Vefa Yayinları, 2007), 236.

216Sources differ as to his dismissal. In İsmail Ünver’s transliterations of lists of the shaykhs of Galata Mevlevi Lodge, one list describes him as leaving of his own accord (“kendi isteği ile ayrılmışdır,” 202), whereas another says he was dismissed (“‘azl şud,” 204). İsmail Ünver, “Galata Mevlevi-hanesi Şeyhleri,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 14 (1994): 195-209.

217 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129, 1-3.

218 Qtd. in Wilhelm Pertsch, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Vol. 6. (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1889), 476.

notebook. 219 Indeed he mastered the language so well that all of his letters to Numan Efendi and

Tahir Bey are written in Ottoman. Diez’s ability to communicate directly in Ottoman, instead of relying on a translator, may have also increased his ability to interact with Ottomans, including at the Galata Mevlevihanesi.

Diez received two letters from Numan Dede after Diez returned to Berlin in September

1790.220 In the first letter to Diez, Numan Dede chastised Diez for not corresponding after he returned to Berlin. Numan Dede wrote:

My friend, how strange it is that since you left Istanbul for your country, not a single letter has arrived inquiring about us. Is there forgetfulness in dervishhood?221 Is it not, as the ancient proverb goes, that one who is far from the eyes is also far from the heart? [The distance] is not an obstacle. Our heart-friend, you know best, but upon receiving this letter of our affection, it is desired that you also endeavor to write and send one to us.222

Numan Dede reminded Diez to correspond with him after returning to Berlin by saying that forgetfulness (feramuş; lit: escaping from memory) is not a quality of a dervish. The quote suggests that Diez was possibly initiated into the Mevlevi order, since Numan Dede used this play on words – a dervish strives for constant remembrance of the Divine (zikir) rather than forgetfulness – to imply that Diez “forgot” his obligations to the order by failing to stay in touch with them. This quote also suggests potential connections between Diez’s association with freemasonry and Ottoman Sufism. The word “feramuş” was later used in the nineteenth century in connection with the founding of freemason lodges in the Middle East. For example,

219 Heinrich von Diez, Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien (Berlin: In Commission der Nicolaischen Buchhandlung 1811), Vol. 2, 1075.

220 Berlin Staatsbibliothek. MS Diez A quart 129, 1-2.

221 Literally: to disappear from memory.

222 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129, 1.

freemason lodges in Iran were called feramuşhane. The Ottoman word for “freemason,” fermason, also resembles feramuş. 223

The letter might also indicate that political changes within the court and the Mevlevi order were underway. Shortly after the first letter, Numan Dede left the Galata Mevlevihanesi to found the Üsküdar Mevlevihanesi that year from his house. The reason for Numan Dede’s dismissal/resignation is currently unclear, but it may be a consequence of the death of Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid I and the accession of Selim III.

The second letter from Numan Dede indicates that Diez brought back a dervish named

Tahir Bey with him to Berlin. In his notes about the letter, Diez wrote that Tahir Bey was to “be instructed in our languages and sciences.”224 After Diez’s mission was complete, he and Tahir

Bey traveled together by boat from Istanbul to Hamburg in May 1790 and then overland to

Berlin.225 Little is known about Tahir Bey.226 Diez described him as a “young person,” and

223 See: Yılmaz Karadeniz, “İran Batılılaşma Hareketinde Mirza Malkum Han’ın Rolü,” SDÜ Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, vol. 23, 2011, 103-111; Thierry Zarcone, Mystiques,Philosophes, et Francs-maçons en Islam (Paris: Jean Maisonneuve, 1993) ; Thierry Zarcone, Secret et Sociétés secrets en islam. Turquie, Iran et Asie Centrale, XIXe-XXe siècles (Milan: Archè, 2002); Thierry Zarcone, “Occultism in an Islamic Context: The Case of Modern Turkey from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Time,” Occultism in a Global Perspective, eds. Henrik Bogdan, Gordan Djurdjevic (New York: Routledge, 2014); Dorothe Sommer, Freemasonry in the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Fraternity and Its Influence in Syria and the Levant (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014).

224 Qtd. in Wilhelm Pertsch, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Vol. 6. (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1889), 476.

225 Since Diez writes that he brought Tahir Bey with him, is assumed that he traveled on the ship with Diez, although the ship’s passenger list is not accessible. Tahir Bey’s name was not among the travel passes (Pässe) granted by Prussia during the time period, although perhaps he could have traveled through Diez’s diplomatic privilege (Searched: GtSA I HA Rep. 9 EE11, Paket 5; I HA Rep. 9 EE12; I HA Rep 9 EE 16 Paket 6, 7).

226 A search of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz did not result in any information on Tahir Bey, except for a short mention of “Tahir, who was brought by von Diez,” in the list of diplomatic personnel staying with the Ottoman ambassador Azmi Efendi. GtSA I

Numan Dede described him as “my spiritual child” (“benim veled-i manevi”), indicating he was his disciple.227 Numan Dede asked Diez to send Tahir Bey back to Istanbul approximately nine months after their arrival in Berlin. He wrote:

We ask a favor of you: try to send our bountiful spiritual child Tahir Bey from there to here by any means, because his father is harassing us here. Please be so kind as to give him one hundred kuruş for travel expenses and send him here as soon as possible. And write anyone here and get one hundred kuruş in return.228

This letter indicates that the Galata Mevlevihanesi sponsored Tahir’s stay in Berlin, since

Numan Efendi wrote to Diez asking him to provide Tahir Bey with 100 kuruş for the return trip to Istanbul and says he will be reimbursed by someone in the lodge. Secondary literature suggests there were very few Ottoman students in Europe before the nineteenth century, and that one of them was a Mevlevi dervish fits with the previous discussion of Mevlevi lodges being at the forefront of Ottoman military reform and connections to Europe.

The second letter from Numan Dede asking for Tahir’s return could have been connected to Numan Dede’s dismissal from the Galata Mevlevihanesi. The second letter is signed Üsküdar and dated 19 Şevval 1205 H (June 21, 1791). Tahir Bey needed to leave Berlin suddenly, and it is possible that this was tied to this leadership change. Around the same time Numan Dede was dismissed from his post at the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul, Diez received this urgent letter from Tahir Bey:

Our esteemed and honored friend, Envoy de Diez,

How are you? My friend, you brought us here from Istanbul. The letter came from Numan Bey. You saw it at the estate and read it. If you tell me, “I won’t get involved,”

HA Rep 11 10556, September 1791. A search of memoirs and correspondence of people he may have come into contact with in Berlin did not turn up any mention of him.

227 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129.

228 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129.

our agreement with you was that I would return to Istanbul whenever I wished. An answer like this doesn’t suit you. No one is known to me in Berlin. For it is certain that this much friendship is not worth it. If you can’t give me however much is needed for the (travel) expenses, it will be necessary to get it from another person and give to me.

Tahir Bey229

It is not clear what happened during Tahir Bey’s visit to Berlin. The second letter from

Numan Efendi indicated that his father wanted him to return to Istanbul. The letter from Tahir

Bey himself indicated that he also wanted to return, but Diez did not help him. A terse reply from

Diez is included on the letter itself. Diez wrote, “However much I am at fault, forgive me. I only want goodness.” 230 Almost three months later, Tahir Bey was apparently still in Berlin. He was reported to be staying with the diplomatic entourage of Ahmed Azmi Efendi, who had been in

Berlin since that February (of 1791). A list of Azmi Efendi’s entourage in September reads,

“Two additional Turks are in the current entourage who actually do not belong to the diplomatic mission…namely, Tahir Bey, who von Diez brought with him and another who came from

Russian captivity.”231 Instead of returning to Istanbul as soon as possible, Tahir Bey apparently joined the Ottoman diplomatic mission in Berlin around September.

Diez developed a close connection to the Galata Mevlevi Lodge during his stay in

Istanbul that continued after his return to Berlin. According to letters from the shaykh of the

Galata Mevlevihanesi, Numan Dede, it appears that Diez may have been initiated into the

229 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129, 3. This letter is written as it is would be spoken in a very direct style using almost exclusively Turkish words. It does not have any of the Persian and Arabic vocabulary and rhetorical flourish characteristic of learned Ottoman letter writing, such as that found in Numan Dede’s letters. It is possible this letter was dictated, implying another author.

230 Berlin Staatsbibliothek, MS Diez A quart 129.

231 GtSA, I HA Rep 11 10556, September 1791. A search of all relevant records in the GtSA did not result in further information about Tahir Bey.

Mevlevi order. He brought back a young dervish with him to become educated in Berlin, sponsored by the Galata Mevlevihanesi, although that did not work out for unknown reasons.

Diez’s involvement with the Galata Mevlevihanesi reflects its importance for Ottoman politics and European diplomacy as well as a possible link between Ottoman Sufism and European freemasonry, although this cannot be confirmed due to a paucity of sources.

Conclusion

Diez’s involvement with the Galata Mevlevihanesi highlights broader connections between European diplomacy, Ottoman military reform, and Sufism in the eighteenth century.

Diez’s mission in Istanbul was to negotiate an alliance treaty between Prussia and the Ottoman

Empire that would boost Prussian prestige on the European diplomatic stage and make it an important player for the Eastern Question. The Ottoman state sought the alliance in order to receive military assistance against Russia, whose rise in the eighteenth century, especially under

Catherine the Great, threatened Ottoman interests. The Ottoman-Prussian alliance was the result of both states’ rivalries with Russia and the Habsburg Empire.

Istanbul Mevlevi lodges played an important, but largely unexamined, role in Ottoman politics. Eighteenth-century Mevlevi lodges in Istanbul supported palace attempts at reform. The first Ottoman Muslim printing press, initiated by Ibrahim Müteferrika, was established with the assistance of the Kasımpaşa Mevlevihanesi and printed many texts related to political and military matters. The military advisor Count Bonneval was connected to the Galata

Mevlevihanesi. Selim III, the initiator of Nizam-ı Cedid, was a Mevlevi and a patron of the

Galata Mevlevihanesi. Istanbul Mevlevi lodges were accessible to Europeans and they cultivated relationships to Europe, as evidenced by Diez’s involvement with them and an attempt to send a student, Tahir Bey, to Berlin.

Upon his return to Berlin, Diez continued his engagement with Ottoman moral philosophy by drawing upon manuscripts he collected in Istanbul, most likely in association with the Galata Mevlevihanesi. He translated these manuscripts within the greater context of the dramatic changes taking place in the German-speaking world as the result of the French

Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The knowledge Diez collected at the Galata Mevlevihanesi would have profound consequences for Diez’s reimagining of the modern state.

Chapter 3: Ottoman Sufism and Prussian Conservatism

Heinrich von Diez sat alone at his desk in 1802 in Kolberg, Prussia bedecked in the finest

Turkish robes and rings with precious jewels. The hour was late, as he rarely put out the candle in his study before 2 AM.232 His library overflowed with his vast book collection and the hundreds of Ottoman manuscripts he brought with him from Istanbul. After returning from

Istanbul, Diez preferred a life of complete seclusion, with only a Turkish servant by his side to help keep his language in practice, never married, and rarely left the house except to go to

Church on Sunday. 233 He spent every hour immersed in his studies, even, as contemporaries noted, at the expense of his health.234

What was in these Ottoman manuscripts that obsessed Diez? This chapter shows how

Diez believed moral philosophy expressed in Ottoman Sufi advice manuals provided the answers for the many political questions in Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. Specifically,

Diez used translations of Ottoman advice manuals to express his political vision of the future, which was rooted in religious renewal. As freemasonry experienced a crisis in 1780’s, Diez possibly turned towards Rosicrucianism, which was favored in the Prussian court at the time.

Rosicrucians called for a renewed Christianity, and Diez envisioned this as the basis of the future

232 “Heinrich von Diez,” Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste, eds. J. S. Ersch and J. G. Gruber, vol. 25 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1834), 168. Also cited in Koerte p. 354.

233 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 93. Diez reportedly brought an educated young man with him from Turkey as an assistant in order to maintain his Turkish language ability through practice. (J.S. Ersch and J.G. Gruber, eds., “Diez, Heinrich Friedrich v.,” Allgemeine Encyclopädie Der Wissenschaften Und Künste (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1834), 167. This could be Tahir Bey, described in Chapter 2, but presumably Tahir Bey left in 1791, so there could have been one more person.

234 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, vol. 2 (1817), 168.

state, drawing from advice in Ottoman manuscripts. Diez was not the only diplomat-orientalist to draw upon Sufi knowledge in Istanbul to envision a reformed state; a group of Habsburg diplomats in Istanbul, including Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Valentin Huszár, and Vincenz von Rosenzweig, also collected Ottoman manuscripts and translated them into German to support a competing political vision for the German-speaking world (see Chapter 4), which later brought them into conflict with Diez (see Chapter 5).

Scholars have argued that Diez underwent a religious conversion between his

Enlightenment youth, time in Istanbul, and return to Prussia. Diez’s obituary in the Allgemeine

Literatur-Zeitung described Diez as “very free-thinking about philosophy and religion in his youth, but completely changed in this regard after returning from the Orient and was fervently devoted to the teachings of the Lutheran Church.” 235 An encyclopedia entry on Diez’s life from

1834 similarly described this change: “After he was earlier an enthusiast for Spinoza, then for

Muhammad and the Qur’an, he was finally hyper-orthodox and a zealot to the point of being branded a heretic.”236 Although Diez appeared to adopt different outlooks at various points of his life, these perspectives were actually a cohesive philosophy that reflected greater changes with freemasonry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As this chapter shows,

Diez’s ideas about moral philosophy developed considerably from his encounter with the Galata

Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul.

Throughout his life, Diez remained committed to the ideas of Renaissance philosopher

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who brought Pyrrhonian skepticism, or the notion that any certain knowledge is impossible to achieve, to the West. Pyrrhonian skepticism led Diez to

235 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, vol, 2 (1817), 168.

236 Ersch and Gruber, “Diez, Heinrich Friedrich v.,” 168. More information about Diez’s enthusiasm for the Qur’an or being branded a heretic is not available.

support freedom of speech in his youth and became a foundation of his religious faith in his later years, similar to the Catholic Montaigne’s own fideistic views. He also became interested in

Montaigne’s notion of moral development through “self-knowledge” (Selbsterkenntnis).

Although he drew diverse conclusions from Montaigne’s philosophy throughout his life,

Montaigne’s work remained a constant foundation of Diez’s thought.

Diez’s commitment to moral philosophy also remained steadfast, although the basis changed. In his youth, he argued that the source of morality is natural law (Naturrecht) (see

Chapter 1). After his residence in Istanbul, Diez began to see the Bible as the basis of moral law

(this also does not contradict his original position if he also viewed the Bible as conforming to natural law – although he does not express this in his writings). A lawyer by training, Diez viewed the law as central to moral development, although his ideas about the law apparently changed during his stay in Istanbul. According to contemporaries, Diez’s observation of Ottoman practices of Islam “… made an indissoluble impression on his soul. He was ashamed of his unfaithfulness to the Christian faith and henceforth stood, like an obedient child, under the revelation of the Divine Word. Since then, he stood firmly fixed on Biblical principles and, in returning to his home country, fulfilled the external duties of his confession with conscientious loyalty.”237 As the result of his stay in Istanbul, Diez turned towards the Bible as a source of law.

Despite Diez’s turn towards the Bible, he remained an anomaly amongst other Christians in Prussia. In his writings, he barely ever mentioned the Church and had an almost singular focus on the Bible itself. He continued to write against the Neologs, who he believed were destroying

Christianity (described below). Diez’s emphasis on self-knowledge, inspired by Montaigne, departed from the traditional Lutheran emphasis on faith alone (sole fide) as the basis of

237 Leopold Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1884), 61.

justification. Diez’s approach to the Bible as a source of revelation and direct religious knowledge (rather than theology, even that of his day) was almost an extreme version of the

Lutheran concept of sola scriptura, the belief that “only Sacred Scripture can establish articles of faith; all theology is to be drawn from the written Word of God alone.”238 This describes Diez’s dismissal of rationalism and a lack of mention of the Church, or even orthodox Lutheran theologians such as Johann Gerhard (1582-1637). He viewed the Bible as a source of law, which also contradicted contemporary antinomian tendencies in Lutheranism. In short, Diez did not support any theologians of his day although he did attend the Prussian Domkirche, which was under the patronage of the Prussian royal court.

Diez’s extreme focus on sola scriptura and self-knowledge could be the result of interaction with the Galata Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul. Islamic doctrine holds that the Qur’an is considered divine revelation, and it had not been subjected to the historical criticism that the

Bible had in Germany during the Enlightenment. This relationship to the Word possibly inspired

Diez to hold a similar view, although instead of the Qur’an, he could have adopted a similar view in regards to the Bible. Diez was apparently also influenced by Turkish dress and manners as well; he reportedly often wore Turkish clothes and was described by one contemporary as “a

Turk in all regards.”239 It is possible that Diez joined the Mevlevi order and developed a practice of Christianity informed by the esoteric teachings of Sufism related to self-knowledge and moral development but rooted in Christian rather than Islamic law, which would explain his concept of the Bible as a source of law. Sufi philosophy views adherence to divine law (shari’a) as the first

238 Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism: A Study of Theological Prolegomena (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1970), 256.

239 Peter Maser, “Orientalische Mystik Und Evangelische Erweckungsbewegung,” Zeitschrift Für Religions- Und Geistesgeschichte 33, no. 3 (1981): 234.

step on the path towards the ultimate Truth, which would also explain Diez’s focus on the law if he was influenced by Sufism.

Diez’s intellectual development also matched the turn towards conservatism in the

Prussian court after the death of Frederick the Great in 1786. Frederick’s successor, Frederick

Wilhelm II (r. 1786-1797) instituted reforms to diminish the influence of neologism. Under the influence of his advisor Johann Christoph Wöllner (1732-1800), Fredrick Wilhelm became involved in the Rosicrucian order, which sought to undo the Enlightenment reforms and establish

Christian orthodoxy. Rosicrucianism grew out of a struggle within freemasonry itself; as rational elements of masonry became dominant after the Wilhelmsbad Convention in 1782, many of

Strict Observance masons, who claimed linage from the Templars, became Rosicrucians.240

Rosicrucian ideology was “deeply irrational, dominated by Neoplatonic mysticism and alchemistic belief in miracles.”241 Wöllner instituted the Edict on Religion of 1788, which sought to decrease the influence of Christian rationalism by forbidding any preaching or education outside of Lutheran orthodoxy.242 The Rosicrucian attack on the Enlightenment and promotion of a re-styled orthodox Christianity fit exactly with Diez’s views during this period, although his membership in the organization would need to be confirmed by lodge records.243

Frederick William II’s successors, Frederick William III and Frederick William IV, also instituted policies to reinvigorate the Church from a conservative religious standpoint. In what

240 Ibid. 110–111.

241 Ibid., 111. See also Klaus Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 84–111.

242 See Michael J Sauter, Visions of the Enlightenment: The Edict on Religion of 1788 and the Politics of the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century Prussia (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009).

243 Further information about Diez’s specific freemason affiliations could be in the Freimaurerbestände in the GStA, which I was not able to review.

became known as the Protestant “Awakening,” they sought to reform Church structures and reinvigorate Christianity in Prussia. Under Frederick III, the Calvinist (Reformed) Churches and

Lutheran Churches merged into the Prussian Union of Churches in 1817. Diez opposed

Frederick III’s reforms, since he viewed them as part of a “new” system straying away from a foundation in the Bible (described below). Frederick III’s son, Frederick William IV, while he was still the crown prince, was a guest at Diez’s house. He later dabbled in orientalism, suggesting at least a tentative link between Diez and the Prussian court after Diez’s return to

Berlin. Also known as the Romantic king, Frederick IV envisioned a mystical Christianity, or

“neo-Pietism,” that drew inspiration from the Middle Ages. Diez was certainly part of the intellectual milieu that tried to influence the crown prince before his accession to the throne.

Although Diez’s turn towards the Bible coincides with the Prussian court’s advancement of the Church in the interest of the state, that is where the similarities end. A major part of the

“Awakening” is a focus on Jesus as a redeemer; Diez does not mention Jesus in his works and instead almost exclusively focuses on the Old Testament. Instead of salvation through faith, which Diez never mentions, his writings are primarily concerned with the cultivation of morality in this world through religious law and self-knowledge.

Violence and Radicalization in the Napoleonic Wars

In September 1790, now almost forty years old, Diez arrived in Berlin from Istanbul. His diplomatic service continued in Berlin for another year as he assisted with the Ottoman embassy of Ahmed Azmi Efendi (d. 1821), who resided in Berlin for thirteen months as the result of the

Prussian-Ottoman Alliance Treaty negotiated by Diez, in 1791. Diez arranged diplomatic receptions, accompanied the embassy to visits throughout the city, and hosted the diplomatic

entourage for lunch at his private residence.244 Later that year, Diez moved to an estate in

Philippsthal, near Potsdam, although he had to leave that location after a couple years to accommodate his growing library.245 Diez was an avid book collector, amassing a collection of

17,000 printed books and 836 manuscripts.246

The same year, 1791, Diez also acquired a sinecure at the Kolberg Cathedral (Kolberger

Dom). Kolberg (now Kołobrzeg, Poland) was a small Prussian town of about 4,000 located on the Baltic Sea.247 The tall brick Cathedral, which became a Lutheran church in 1531, was originally built in 1321.248 It was renovated in the mid-eighteenth century after falling into disrepair. Diez fulfilled several roles at the Cathedral as cantor, supervisor of the women’s convent (Klostervater des Jungfrauenklosters), and lawyer.249 In addition to his activities at the

244 For Diez’s involvement with the embassy, see Königlich Privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen: Feb. 15, 1791; Feb. 17, 1791; Feb. 22, 1791; Feb. 24, 1791; March 5, 1791; March 15, 1791; March 29, 1791, and GStA I HA Rep 11 10555.

245 Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 93.

246 F.L. Hoffmann, “Erinnerung an Preussische Bibliographen und Litterarhistoriker, Bibliophile und Besitzer Merkwürdiger Buechersammlungen. 35: Heinrich Friedrich von Diez,” Serapeum 30 (1869): 167.

247 with an approximate civilian population of 4,469 in 1798 Heinrich Berghaus, Landbuch des Herzogthums Pommern und des Fürstenthums Rügen, vol. 1, Part III (Berlin: Dietze, 1867), 10.

248 It is now a Catholic church known as Bazylika konkatedralna Wniebowzięcia Najświętszej Maryi Panny.

249 Heinrich Berghaus, Landbuch des Herzogthums Pommern und des Fürstenthums Rügen. Vol. 1, Part III (Berlin: Dietze, 1867), 98. The convent was one of three Protestant convents in Prussia. See: J. Niederstetter, Staats-Almanach für das Königreich Preußen, als Ergänzung zum Königlichen Preußischen Staats-Kalender auf dem Gebiete der Statistik, der Geographie und der inneren Verwaltung ( Herausgegeben von J. Niederstetter (Berlin: Carl Heymann, 1867), 24; M. Malte-Brun, Universal Geography: Containing the Description of Prussia, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1829), 153. For information on his resignation from the administration of the women’s convent, see GStA I HA 146 Nr. 366. For legal activities, see: Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 93.

Cathedral, Diez dedicated his time to studying his books and manuscripts. He also carried out extensive correspondence with scholars throughout the German-speaking world, which he destroyed before his death in 1817. Some of his letters, however, remained in his correspondents’ literary estates (Christian Dohm and Friedrich Nicolai) and published letter collections, with the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller (1752-1809) and Prussian educational reformer Gottfried Funk (1734-1814).250

Diez retreated further into his studies during these years. He described in a 1806 letter to

Johannes Müller: “I keep busy and months pass by like the blink of an eye in the oriental and occidental studies (morgen- und abendländischen Studien) which I breathe night and day…”251

By this time, Diez had over 700 manuscripts, roughly half European and half non-European.252

According to Diez, he focused on manuscripts related to “religion, morality, governance, and wisdom.”253 Diez translated many of the manuscripts into German and used them for his own self-study. He wrote in a letter during this time that he had “some translations of splendid works complete with annotations. I’m not publishing them, however, since I wouldn’t get acceptable terms from the booksellers. I haven’t published anything at all since 1784.”254 Diez would change his mind in 1811 and begin to publish the translations after working on them for almost twenty years.

250

251 Maurer Constant, Briefe an Johann von Müller (Supplement zu dessen sämmtlichen Werken), vol. 4 (Schaffhausen: Hurtersche Buchhandlung, 1840), 350.

252 Ibid., 4:332.

253 Ibid.

254 Ibid., 4:349.

Diez was in Kolberg when French troops laid siege to the city in February 1807.255 The previous year, Napoleon’s forces had defeated Prussian troops in the decisive Battle of Jena.

Diez stayed in the city, with his book collection carefully packed in hundreds of boxes in his cellar, for the first three months of the siege.256 In a letter to Johannes Müller on August 28,

1807, Diez described the violence that surrounded him: “One morning, I saw a pregnant woman hit by a bullet right under my window. It split her body apart and ripped out the child. The woman didn’t make a sound, dead, she rolled on her side as if she wanted to shield her body from onlookers. I have witnessed many such horrible sights and I cannot tell you how many times I cursed the invention of gun powder during the siege.”257 The violence in Kolberg eventually forced Diez to flee the city on June 13, 1807.

Diez left with his precious book collection, although he did not find safe refuge due to widespread fighting throughout the German-speaking world. He first tried to sail east to

Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) only to find that it had already been taken by French troops. Diez then sailed to the west, past Kolberg, to Stralsund, only to discover that a ceasefire had expired the same day of his arrival. Two months and 1200 Reichstalers in travel expenses later, Diez gave up searching for a safe haven and sailed back to Kolberg.258 Despite the unsuccessful trip, Diez concluded it was good that he made the journey – on the day that he left, two shells hit his house that would have been fatal: one fell on the second floor at the exact place and time where he usually dressed in the morning and the other fell where he had stored his

255 For an overview of the French attack on Kolberg, see: Otto Rubow, Stadt und Festung Kolberg: Blätter aus Kolbergs Geschichte (Kolberg: Prange, 1936), 34–48.

256 Constant, Briefe an Johann von Müller, 4:355–6.

257 Ibid., 4:361.

258 Ibid., 4:357.

beloved library.259 A 130-pound bomb later destroyed the library in his house.260 By the time

Diez returned to Kolberg on August 3, a ceasefire agreement had been reached, although his house had been destroyed.

The destruction of his house and city at the hands of French troops added to Diez’s anti-

Aufklärung convictions. In an August 1807 letter to Johannes Müller, Diez opined that the

French invasion of the German-speaking world was divine retribution for the Enlightenment.261

Diez wrote, “kingdoms fall when they abandon God, and even if one hears about it in history a thousand times, he is never ready for it and to bear the blows with composure…”262 He continued, “God took it [Prussia] from us to teach us that our much-vaunted childish and false

Enlightenment (Aufklärung)- that is, unbelief and madness – was only for our own doom. We were tested to see how suddenly man is ruined by pure reason when it does not rest on God.”263

For Diez, the Enlightenment brought God’s wrath upon Prussia, leading the destruction of the

Napoleonic wars.

Diez moved to Berlin as a result of the destruction of Kolberg. He acquired a large brick villa about a half hour outside of the city in a park near the Spree River in the Stralauer

Viertel.264 In Berlin, the Prussian capital, Diez was now at the center of political debates about the future. Diez invited many of Berlin’s notable thinkers to daily lunches at his house, which

259 Ibid., 4:359.

260 Ibid.

261 Diez does not explain why France, a center of the Enlightenment, was then victorious.

262 Constant, Briefe an Johann von Müller, 4:353.

263 Ibid., 4:354.

264 Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, 1:55. Babinger, “Ein orientalistischer Berater Goethes,” 93.

had rooms decorated in various styles, including a Chinese room, a Persian room, and a Turkish room.265 The lunches were held in the Turkish room according to diplomatic standards. 266

Guests included philologist Friedrich August Wolf (1759-1824) and Alexander von Humboldt

(1769-1859).267 Diez is described during these years as leading an “existence accompanied by diverse personal and literary connections, influenced by oriental ways of life and solemn

Lutheran piety.”268 Except for his lunch guests, Diez lived in almost complete seclusion.

Contemporaries report that he rarely left the house except to visit the Berlin Cathedral

(Domkirche), the court church, of which he was a member.269

In Berlin, Diez began to publish the translations he had worked on in the twenty years since his return from Istanbul. Diez originally translated the Ottoman works into German for his own self-study. However, the Napoleonic Wars and subsequent Prussian reforms strengthened

Diez’s idea that the Prussian state was headed in the wrong direction. He used his translations to advocate for his vision of the state, which was rooted in moral philosophy. He published all of his work at his own expense and gave the proceeds to the Berlin Cathedral’s charity

(Almosenkasse beim Dom Zu Berlin).

Skepticism Revisited

265 Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, 1:55.

266 Ibid.

267 Kurt Balcke, “Neues über ‘Goethes orientalischen Berater’ Heinrich Friedrich von Diez,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 84 (1930): 76.

268 Johann Albrecht Reiswitz, “Diez, Heinrich Friedrich,” ed. Otto Stolberg-Wernigerode, Neue Deutsche Biographie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1957), 713.

269 Balcke, “Neues über ‘Goethes orientalischen Berater’ Heinrich Friedrich von Diez,” 76. I did not find any mention of Diez in Humboldt or Wolf’s publications or literary estates.

Throughout all of his work, Diez’s starting point was philosophical skepticism. In his early years, Diez was a self-described “skeptic” who did not view the truth as knowable (see

Chapter 1). In the introduction to the Buch des Kabus, Diez wrote that every man of learning places less weight upon knowledge as he ages until he eventually realizes that he does not know anything at all.270 Diez’s skeptical beliefs coincided with ancient Greek, Ottoman, and Lutheran thought. Diez noted the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-475 BC) “was the first to say that only God knows the truth and humans can only have opinions.”271 True knowledge, for

Diez, ultimately belongs to the divine and only bestowed upon humans in limited quantities, which parallels the Islamic concept of God as the All-Knowing (Al-Alim). Diez writes that

Muslims “are correct…that humans can only believe what God has revealed for him, that he can neither understand the How of things nor even know something from himself; instead, everything that he knows to say only appears to be known because the actual, real truth rests by

God alone as with all potency, strength, and power.”272

Diez’s critique of rationalism also put him at odds with the historical-critical approach to the Bible that had developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For this reason, Diez was likely a supporter of the Edict of Religion in 1788. Diez opposed Biblical criticism, since it viewed the Bible as an historical document rather than divine revelation. This was especially true of the rationalist theologians who had gained much ground by this time. Diez dismissed them in a letter to Johannes Müller: “Such are the people of this time, that call themselves

270 Diez, Buch des Kabus, 251.

271 Diez, Buch des Kabus, 238.

272 Diez, Buch des Kabus, 238.

theologians and don’t read or understand the Bible.”273 He similarly expressed his frustration in a letter to Gottfried Funk:

…the current age neither expects to, or wishes, to be woken up from the blindness and ignorance into which it has sunken; for, the people of this world do not think to see it as a crying shame that all preachers have now become freethinkers and teach and present only the crudest heathenry or made-up religions in the name of Christianity; among the baptized, there is barely a single one that is orthodox (rechtgläubig) and knows and professes the Bible.274

For Diez, “orthodoxy” meant unquestioning belief in the Bible as revelation. As a result, he was a fierce critic of theologian Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), who spearheaded the historical-critical approach the Bible. In a letter to Johann Müller, Diez described Michaelis as one of the “newer, ignorant theologians.”275 Elsewhere, Diez wrote Michaelis “doesn’t have faith, and for that reason wants to rationalize God’s miracles by attributing them to natural causes.”276 He thought that Michaelis’s and Moses Mendelssohn’s approach to the Old

Testament as “merely songs and sayings” misses the point. In Diez’s view, the purpose of the

Bible was to establish moral law, so it simply needed to be followed rather than be understood rationally. This was also an attack on the theologian and orientalist Johann Gottfried Eichhorn

(1753-1827), a student of Michaelis, whose works Einleitung in das Alte Testament (5 vols.,

Leipzig, 1780–1783) and Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1804–1812) attempted to explain miracles through natural phenomena.

In a long letter to the historian Johannes Müller, who had been his friend for thirty years by that time, Diez outlined his views about historical-critical approaches to the Bible. The letter

273 Constant, Briefe an Johann von Müller, 4:346.

274 Funk, Schriften, 267.

275 Constant, Briefe an Johann von Müller, 4:339.

276 Ibid., 4:342.

was a response to a manuscript Müller had sent Diez of a piece he was working on about

“prehistory” (Vorzeit). The question of prehistory was an attempt to create a new understanding of the beginning of the world that was not based on the Bible. Diez dismissed this notion outright, writing, “it is enough for me to unconditionally believe everything that the Bible teaches about prehistory.”277 Biblical-historical research was unnecessary, according to Diez, since “God told us through Moses what the world is and when it began.”278 He says the first part of Müller’s work “has no basis, because Mosaic history is not laid on the foundation of revelation [in the work].”279 That is, Müller’s work attempted to treat Mosaic history without considering the Old Testament as revelation. Diez understood this to be a contradiction – if the

Pentateuch was not revealed to Moses, then why attempt to believe any part of the story? The fantastical accounts of the first five books of the Old Testament, for Diez, are proof of revelation.

Diez writes, “it is impossible that people write and speak that that by themselves as Moses did.

How it is possible for a person to speak about the creation of the world and the first humans when no one was there?”280 He continued, “No one knows who his biological father and mother are if it is not told to him; and people want to presume to be able to know who the creator is!”281

For Diez, the Bible simply needed to be believed as a true account. Subjecting the Bible to criticism only exposed its contradiction to reason, which is why, for Diez, reason should be subservient to belief.

277 Ibid., 4:334.

278 Ibid., 4:337.

279 Ibid., 4:341.

280 Constant 340

281 Constant 340

The External Laws: Prussian Legal and Educational Reform

Diez’s first critique of Prussian reform can be found in a translation he published in 1809 entitled Ermahnung an Islambol (Advice to Islambol; original: Nasihat-i Islambol). The piece was originally written in 1626 by a Mevlevi dervish from Konya with the pen-name of Üveysi, meaning one linked to the Sufi chain of spiritual transmission without physically meeting his teacher. It is not a very famous or well-known piece in Ottoman literary history, and Diez's familiarity with the text was probably the result of his Mevlevi connection (see Chapter 2).

Üveysi was associated with a Mevlevi lodge in Istanbul; most likely, Diez found out about this work through the lodge.282 The manuscript itself came from a larger manuscript of Ottoman hymns.283 Diez's overall collection of Ottoman manuscripts includes a significant number of

Ottoman hymns, which were performed in Ottoman Sufi lodges, which further underscores his connection to Sufi lodges while in Istanbul. 284

Üveysi's piece is a sharp social critique of seventeenth-century Istanbul. In the introduction to his translation, Diez described the poem as a “remarkable piece that deserves recognition for its useful content and bold tone.”285 In the poem, Üveysi accused the judges and viziers of the Ottoman government of abandoning religious law (shari’a) and pursuing worldly ends. Diez’s translation reads:

282 Diez, Ermahnung, 2. Diez does not specify which lodge, but the extant Mevlevi lodges in Istanbul at the time were: Galata Mevlevi Lodge, Yenikapı Mevlevi Lodge, Kasımpaşa Mevlevi Lodge, and Beşiktaş Mevlevi Lodge.

283 Diez, Ermahnung, 2.

284 See Diez A oct. 47, 54, 74, 75, 78, 85, 96, 98, 101, 102, 108, 110, 118, 119, 120, 127, 130, 134, 142, 146, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158. The contents of the manuscripts are described in Wilhelm Pertsch, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der königlichen Bibliothek zu Berlin. Vol. 6. (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1889), 326-329.

285 Diez, Ermahnung, 1.

You made a trap of lies and called it a court of law. Where is the throne of Ahmed? Where are sentences according to God’s Law? Today you scorn religion and turn the Law into intrigues Will the Beloved [Muhammad] intercede for you with God tomorrow? How?! Do you then deny the Resurrection or will the Day of Reckoning never arrive? On that day will you be addressed: “Oh my people!” by God’s Messenger? You only follow the times, you just think about women, and most of you about boys. The powerful only worship the purse and most have become enemies of God. 286

Üveysi argued that instead of the “Throne of Ahmed,” the throne of Muhammad, who made

“God’s Law” clear through revelation, the sultan’s advisors “scorn religion” and “turn the law into intrigues.” Üveysi argued this will come at a cost, questioning how people could then expect the Beloved, Muhammad, to intercede for them on Judgment Day when they have abandoned his religion. Instead, the dervish notes, people only follow the fashion of the times and care about worldly matters. Üveysi’s critique of a legal system that has deviated from divine law resembles Diez’s own beliefs about the Prussian legal system.

This piece can be read as a critique of the Prussian legal reforms that began two years before its publication. Prussian reformers Karl Freiherr vom Stein (1757-1831) and Karl August

Fürst von Hardenberg (1750-1822) initiated a series of military, administrative and educational reforms in 1807 aimed at strengthening the Prussian state in the wake of defeat in the Napoleonic

Wars. The reforms, among other things, abolished serfdom, reformed education, and opened the civil service to all classes. They set the stage for the modern Prussian state in which citizens eventually had equal rights and access to mass education. Diez, who was a dedicated monarchist and supported the feudal system, viewed these reforms as introducing new elements into society that were not based on divine law. In addition, the reforms contributed to a bureaucratic state with less power for the monarch. As Diez’s first published translation, this work can be read as a

286 Diez, Ermahnung, 8. This translation is from Diez’s German translation. An alternative translation, albeit dated, is available in E. J Gibb, A History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 3 (London: Luzac, 1904), 214-218.

scathing critique of the Prussian administration and clergy, who were introducing what ultimately ended up to be modern reforms, at the expense of the power of the monarch. Like

Üveysi, Diez supported the monarch but accused those around him of deviating from religious law. Diez’s critique is also part of a greater struggle within freemasonry; the reformers around the monarch were Illuminati, who envisioned a society eventually free of Church and monarchical control, while by this time Diez had changed sides to support the monarch and a revigoration of Christianity, which was tied to Rosicrucianism.

Diez further developed his criticism of Prussian reforms in 1811 through a German translation of the Ottoman Humayunname, which he titled the Königliche Buch. It was based on an ancient collection of Sanskrit fables known as the Panchatantra, which is believed to have been written around 300 BC. These fables were translated into many languages and dispersed throughout the world in various forms.287 In Europe, they came to be known as the Fables of

Bidpai. The manuscript Diez worked from came from an Ottoman translation of the Arabic translation of the fables (Anwar-i Suhayli). The translator, Ali Çelebi, dedicated his work to

Sultan Süleyman I (1512-20) and gave it the title Humayunname. Diez bought several examples of the manuscript in Istanbul and used these for his translation.288 The work depicts a series of interactions between a king and his advisors in which they discuss matters of state and religion.

287 For a history of these translations, see: Patrick Olivelle, Pañcatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)., xliii-xlv.

288 Heinrich von Diez, Über inhalt und vortrag, entstehung und schicksale des Königlichen buchs (Berlin: Nicolai, 1811), 106.Diez, Königliche Buch, 106.

In an 164-page introduction to his translation, Diez lashed out at the Prussian reformers and argued for a return to pre-Enlightenment Church Law. Diez dismissed all reforms that are not based on the Ten Commandments and old Lutheran catechism as “useless.”289 Diez wrote:

In many countries, people stopped holding such laws in high esteem long ago, since they ceased making the religion of the Old and New Testament as the first and fundamental God-given law the unconditional basis of all administration. They even separated it from the state and, at the same time, betrayed it as an object of idle speculation and the human arbitrariness of anyone’s ideas, whereas God did not leave his commandments for the review and critique of humans, rather he ordered them only for the observation and obedience of them, prince and subject alike.290

For Diez, the “basis of all administration” should be Biblical rather than secular law. In a complete turnaround from his early work, Diez critiqued the new laws for separating Church and state. In Diez’s view, the Bible is first and foremost a book of law that must be obeyed, which means it should also be the basis of any type of state administration. Biblical criticism, he argues, is nothing more than “idle speculation” and “arbitrariness of anyone’s ideas,” which misses the main point of the Bible as a code of law rather than something for “review and critique.” This is an attack on the Neologs, who tried to reconcile the Bible with reason and an historical perspective.

Diez continued his critique to also address educational reform. Prussia was the first

European country to introduce compulsory schooling, through Frederick the Great’s

Generallandschulreglement (1763-5), and the Prussian educational system served as a model for modern school systems throughout the world. Between 1809-10, two years before Diez published the translation, William von Humboldt (1767-1835) had reshaped the Prussian educational system through further standardization and reforms and established the University of

289 Ibid., 31.

290 Ibid.

Berlin (now Humboldt University). Diez did not support these educational reforms, which he viewed as tied to the Enlightenment. He wrote:

Education (Erziehung) and advancement (Besserung) cannot be accomplished through cognition (Kenntisse) and intellect (Verstand). Not all instruction without discrimination is suitable or beneficial for all people…especially the intellect is only under the domination (Herrschaft) of the desires and passions of the heart; it follows that all instruction without discipline and fear of God merely passes through the intellect, bringing ruin upon people, and people will not be made happy through cognition, doubt and reason, but rather through good manners, certainty, and belief.291 For Diez, the purpose of education was to cultivate “good manners, certainty and belief.”

Building upon his idea of faith over reason, Diez argued that a proper education (Erziehung) and advancement (Besserung) does not rest on the development of the intellect, which he viewed as subservient to the “desires and passions of the heart.” Instead, the heart itself must be developed in order to reach advancement, which, Diez argued, is built through self-knowledge.

The Inner Laws: Self-knowledge and Moral Purification

Diez further advocated his political vision in an 1811 translation of the Ottoman

Kabusname, which Diez translated as Buch des Kabus. The Kabusname was an advice manual written in 1082 AD by the Ziyarid ruler Kaykavus (ca. 1021-1087) to his son, Gilanshah, and translated into Turkish numerous times. It offers practical ethical guidance on all aspects of human life, and Diez referred to it as the “entire methodology of oriental (morgenländische) morals” (Diez 1811: 191). Each of the forty-four chapters give practical recommendations on a specific topic, including religious belief (Chapters 1-3), everyday activities such as eating and sleeping (Chapters 10 and 17), family matters such as selecting a wife and raising children

(Chapters 26 and 27) and the art of governance (Chapters 37-42). Throughout the work,

Kaykavus refers to the Qur’an, hadith, Arabic proverbs, and folk tales to support his advice. The final chapter, Chapter 44, focuses exclusively on virtue, and Diez described it as “the sum of all

291 Diez, Königliche Buch, 27.

previous chapters,” since it outlines the ethical ideals of chivalry (Persian: javānmardi, Arabic: futuwwa), which was used by Sufis to cultivate virtue through etiquette (adab).

The Kabusname had a long-lasting and significant impact in the Ottoman court, and

Turkish authors translated the Kabusname from Persian into Turkish numerous times. As a work of advice literature, or “mirrors for princes,” a genre found in many cultures from ancient

Greece, India, medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the Islamic world, the Kabusname offered guidelines to the ruler and upper classes. It was one of several often-cited pieces of Ottoman advice literature which also included the Siyasetname of Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk (1090) and the Kutadgu Bilig by Yusuf Has Hacib (1069).292 The earliest known existing manuscript of the original Persian Kabusname, dated from 1227, is in the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi in Istanbul.293

Turkish authors translated the Kabusname into Turkish six times in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the most well-known and widely-circulating example of these translations was by

Mercimek Ahmed b. Ilyas in 1432 for Sultan Murad II (1421-51).294 Mercimek’s translation was revised by Nazmizâde Murtada in 1705 to update the language to reflect the Persianized literary style of the early eighteenth century.295 Through these translations from Persian to Turkish over three centuries, the Kabusname had a long-lasting and significant influence in Ottoman literature.

292 Virginia H. Aksan, “Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 01 (1993): 53.

293 J.T.P. de Bruijn, “Kaykāvus B. Eskandar,” Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition (New York, 2010).

294 Enfel Doğan, “On Translatıons of Qabus-Nama During the Old Anatolian Turkish Period,” Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi 5, no. 21 (2012).

295 ʻUnṣur al-Maʻālī Kaykāvūs ibn Iskandar ibn Qābūs, The Book of Advice, trans. Eleazar Birnbaum ([S.l.]: Printed at Harvard University Print. Off., 1981).

Diez’s Buch des Kabus was the first full translation of the Kabusname into a European language.296 The 867-page work includes an extensive introduction and footnotes.297 Diez drew upon three Ottoman manuscripts from his collection to produce the German translation. He did not consult the original Persian text and instead exclusively relied on the Ottoman translations.298

Diez originally worked from the Nazmizade translation (MS Diez A Quart 60 in his collection), which he acquired during his residence in Istanbul.299 According to Diez, this manuscript had many mistakes in the text, presumably as the result of being copied by hand by a series of copyists.300 This caused Diez to doubt the accuracy of his translation, so he drew from two more

Ottoman manuscripts, which he possibly acquired after his return to Prussia. 301 The first was

MS Diez A Oct 60, which was a more faithful hand-written copy and the second was a copy of the Mercimek translation (MS Diez A Folio 2). These three Ottoman translations of the

Kabusname in Diez’s manuscript collection served as the basis for his translation of the work into German. Diez’s manuscript collection, including these works, is housed at the Berlin

Staatsbibliothek.

296 Translated excerpts of the Kabusname were available in Antoine Galland, Les bons mots et les maximes des orientaux (Paris, 1730).

297 This has been reproduced, except for the introduction, in ʻUnṣur al-Maʻālī Kaykāvūs ibn Iskandar ibn Qābūs, Heinrich Friedrich von Diez, and Turgut Vogt, Buch des Kabus (Zürich: Spur Verlag, 1999).

298 Heinrich von Diez, Buch des Kabus oder Lehren des persischen Königs Kjekjawus für seinen Sohn Ghilan Schach (Berlin: Nicolai, 1811), 178.

299 Ibid., 180.

300 Ibid., 181.

301 Ibid.

Diez’s introduction to the Buch des Kabus outlined his conviction that self-knowledge

(“Selbsterkenntniss”) formed the basis of all moral philosophy. Diez described self-knowledge as “the only science that is never understood by most people and only by a few in advanced age.”302 Diez described self-knowledge in the Königliches Buch as the “key to wisdom and the path that leads to God and all good things.”303 Diez’s concept of moral philosophy was rooted in the necessity to know oneself in order to reach knowledge of the Divine, a concept from ancient

Greek thought which also informs Sufism. In the first chapter of the Buch des Kabus, Kaykāvus advises his son to not attempt to know the Divine, which is unknowable, but to instead “first know yourself and take lessons from your situation, since he who knows himself knows God

[…] you are the Known and He is the Knower, that is, you are the Creation and He is the

Creator. So try to focus your contemplation on your createdness rather than his act of creation.”304 In a page-long footnote, Diez described this concept as “one of the greatest truths that can be spoken and also the basic truth of real Christianity.”305 Contradicting the teachings of the Church, Diez believed that the essence of Christianity was knowledge of oneself, a notion shared by ancient Greek and Islamic thought. As a result, the Kabusname offered keys to self- knowledge that were sought after for moral philosophy.

Diez envisioned self-knowledge as the basis for the state, arguing that the monarch must know himself in order to rule others. Diez described self-knowledge as the basis of governance, which to him was knowing the subject’s desires and keeping them in check. He wrote:

302 Ibid., 6.

303 Diez, Über inhalt und vortrag, entstehung und schicksale des Königlichen buchs, 18.

304 Diez, Buch des Kabus oder Lehren des persischen Königs Kjekjawus für seinen Sohn Ghilan Schach, 285–6.

305 Ibid., 286.

He who wants to rule others must deal with appetites and passions, dispositions and tendencies, mistakes and vices of people; that is, with things that every man, even the dumbest person, attempts to carefully lock away in himself, until he makes it known through tricks with which he secretly or openly brings it out. And without knowing these things as the foundation, no one can know how he must treat people in order to lead them to certain purposes, which people call “governance.” Governance thus means keeping the reins on the affinities, desires, and passions of people, that means to restrict and command the ambition, greed and lust, with which the people on this world search their false happiness, so that one interferes with another and all interfere with the whole in the least amount possible. Since not only do all follies and evil committed by humans stem from these three desires, but also all backwards opinions and misapprehensions that people take on to the detriment of everyone. In short, the governance of the kingdom, the family and individual people has no other foundation than self-knowledge (Selbsterkenntnis)….306

For Diez, the art of governance begins with self-knowledge. After a ruler understands his own passions and desires, he is able to understand those of his subjects. Rulership, for Diez, is keeping these desires in check, which requires controlling the three main sources of evil, which are “ambition, greed, and lust.” Through self-knowledge, the ruler recognizes these attributes in himself and how to control them, thus making him capable of also seeing them in his subjects and governing them. Thus, for Diez, effective governance begins with the monarch knowing himself and then using this knowledge to rule his subjects. Once a ruler has understood his own

306 “Wer andere regieren soll, hat es mit Neigungen und Leidenschaften, mit Gesinnungen und Absichten, mit Fehlern und Lastern der Menschen zu thun, das ist, mit Dingen, welche jeder, selbst der Dümmste, sorgfältig in sich zu verschliessen sucht, bis er sich durch Steiche kund giebt, welche er Heimlich oder öffentlich damit ausführt. Und ohne diese Dinge aus dem Grude zu kennen, kann Niemand wissen, wie er Menschen zu behandeln müsse, um sie zu bestimmten Zwecken zu führen, was man Regieren nennt. Regieren heißt also, die Neigungen, Begierden und Leidenschaften der Menschen im Zaum zu halten, das heißt, Ehrsucht, Habsucht und Wollust, worin die Menschen auf dieser Welt ihre falsche Glückseligkeit suchen, so beschränken und beherrschen, daß der eine den andern und alle das Ganze aufs wenigste beeinträchtigen; denn aus diesen drey Lüsten entstehn nicht blos alle Thorheiten und Bosheiten, welche die Menschen begehen, sondern auch alle verkehrte Meynungen und Irthümer, welche sie zum Schaden des Ganzen annehmen. Kurz die Regierung der Reiche, der Familien und einzelnen Menschen hat keine andere Grundlage als die Selbsterkenntniss…” Diez, Über inhalt und vortrag, entstehung und schicksale des Königlichen buchs, 13–14.

inner state, he can understand that of his subjects and use that information to rule. This technique is taught in the Königliches Buch, which teaches self-knowledge.

Conclusion

Upon his return to Prussia, Diez drew from Ottoman advice manuals and the ideas of

Sufism to envision a solution for the Prussian state following the Napoleonic Wars. He believed a state firmly grounded in religious law would prosper, and his first German translation of an

Ottoman text, Ermahnung an Islambol, criticized state administrators who sought to influence the sultan to create laws outside of religious law. This was a thinly-veiled critique of the Stein-

Hardenburg reforms, which Diez continued to argue against in subsequent publications. In the

Buch des Kabus, Diez translated a major work of Sufi etiquette (adab), which showed how to cultivate self-knowledge by limiting one’s acts to the those prescribed in the book. Diez further developed his notion of self-knowledge in his translation of the Königliches Buch, which he argued could form the basis of a state if the ruler was able to know himself. Through these works, it is possible that Diez was trying to influence the Crown Prince Wilhelm IV, who was reportedly a guest at his house. Diez believed that a ruler with self-knowledge would be able to effectively govern his people, and that Ottoman advice manuals contained the secrets to cultivating this form of rulership.

Chapter 4: Romantic Nationalism and Sufi Poetry in Vienna

“Say: To God belongs the Orient, and to God belongs the Occident. He guides whom he will to the straight path.” - Motto of Fundgruben des Orients (from Qur’an 2:142)

The first edition of the journal Fundgruben des Orients was published in Vienna in 1809.

Its title, Fundgruben, promised readers a treasure trove of undiscovered oriental texts. It was a journal for self-described “enthusiasts” (Liebhabern) who enjoyed all kinds of poems, stories and essays translated from Arabic, Persian, Turkish and other languages into the major languages of

Europe. Some texts were translated into French, Latin, Italian, or English, although the majority were translated into German. The translations covered a variety of fields of knowledge, which were categorized in the journal’s table of contents under philology, poetry, history, geography, natural history, and miscellany.307 Each volume of the journal had three title pages: one in

Arabic, one in German and one in French. The journal’s name and a motto that is part of a translated verse from the Qur’an was printed on the title page of each volume. The introduction to the first volume discusses the quote’s significance: “We feel called to follow the straight path towards the perfection of Oriental studies; therefore we apply the meaning of our motto to our endeavor.”308 The Islamic concept of the “straight path” (sirat al-mustaqim) is the believer’s path towards righteousness, and it is asked for in the five daily prayers with the recitation of the

Fatiha, which includes “Guide us to the straight path.” 309 The editors of the journal applied this religious concept to the publication and circulation of translations of oriental literature in the

307 See Table of Contents (“Inhaltsverzeichniss”), Fundgruben des Orients 6 (1818), 500-502.

308 “Vorrede,” Fundgruben des Orients 1, no. 1. (1809): II.

309 Qur’an 1:6.

journal. While the Fundgruben’s path might have been straight, it was short; the journal only survived for nine years, during which only six volumes were published.

This chapter examines three important translations of Sufi texts in Fundgruben des

Orients by Habsburg diplomats to the Ottoman Empire. These translations highlighted the connection between Habsburg orientalism, diplomacy in Istanbul, and Ottoman Sufism.310 The translations are: 1) the Qur’an, translated into rhymed verse by Joseph von Hammer (1774-1856)

2) Rumi’s Mesnevi translated by Valentin von Huszár (1788-1850); and 3) Jami’s Yusuf and

Zulaykha, translated by Vinzenz von Rosenzweig (1791-1865). Hammer was the editor of the journal, and its patron was Wacław Seweryn Rzewuski (1784-1831), a Polish count who spent time learning Arabic and Turkish in Vienna. All of these translations were conducted by

Habsburg orientalists who had been members of the Royal Academy for Oriental Languages (k.k.

Akademie für Orientalische Sprachen) and former diplomats in the Ottoman Empire. The translations of the Habsburg diplomat-orientalists were rooted in their diplomatic service and connections to Sufi lodges in Istanbul. This made them similar to the Prussian diplomat- orientalist Heinrich von Diez, although they came into conflict based on a submission Diez sent the Fundgruben (see Chapter 5) and on their competing political visions, which they used their translations to support. All of the translations were significant works for Sufism, especially in the formative period around the Crusades.

For the German-speaking world, the central political question in the wake of the French

Revolution and Napoleonic Wars was that of the nation-state. In the late eighteenth century, the

310 Hammer’s Qur’an translation and Huszár’s Mesnevi translation were not published elsewhere; Rosenzweig’s translation was later published as a book: Vinzenz Rosenzweig- Schannau, Joseph und Suleicha: Historisch-romantisches Gedicht aus dem persischen des Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami (Wien: Schmid, 1824).

German-speaking world consisted of Prussia, the Habsburg Empire and smaller, central

European states in the Holy Roman Empire. By 1806, three years before the journal’s first volume, Napoleon’s forces had taken control of most of the German-speaking world. French troops had conquered most of the smaller German states, bringing them together under the

Confederation of the Rhine. France conquered the Habsburg Empire at the Battle of Austerlitz in

1805 and then defeated Prussia a year later in the Battle of Jena. Napoleon’s forces occupied the major cities of the German-speaking world, Berlin and Vienna, and the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved. In the wake of these defeats, German authors looked to the idea of a German nation- state. They developed the concept of nation, already begun in the eighteenth century through works such as Johann Gottfried von Herder’s (1744-1803) four-part Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784-91), into a distinct German nationalism based on the notion of a shared language throughout the German- speaking world. The same year that Fundgruben began, Johann Fichte’s Addresses to the

German Nation, given in Berlin under French occupation, furthered the notion of a German nation that was united by language and superior to other nations due to its language.

Language also played a central role in the literature and philosophy of the era. While

Romantic authors did not identify themselves as romantics, the name came from the concept of romantische Poesie (Romantic poetry), which was theorized by a main literary figure, Friedrich

Schlegel (1772-1829).311 In a careful study of Schlegel’s notebooks, Frederick Beiser argues that

Schlegel identifies “the poetic with the creative power in human beings, and indeed with the productive principle in nature itself.”312 Poetry, for Schlegel and other authors such as August

311 Frederick Beiser, The Romantic Imperative: The Concept of Early German Romanticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 7.

312 Beiser, Romantic Imperative, 15.

Wilhelm Schlegel, Schelling and Novalis, was the process of creation itself.313 Written (literary) poetry was simply the highest manifestation of this process.314 Thus poetry was central to creation and, for the romantics, poetry was at the center of being. Translating Sufi poetry, with its mystical and philosophical themes, fit with Schlegel’s notion of romantic poetry. In his memoirs,

Hammer recalls meeting the Schlegel brothers in Vienna in 1807 and reading them translations of Sufi poetry.315

Joseph von Hammer: Diplomat, Orientalist, and Editor of Fundgruben des Orients

Joseph von Hammer was born in Graz on June 9, 1774. His father, also named Joseph, was a civil servant who administered Jesuit properties after they fell under state control as the result of a papal bull, which suppressed the order in 1773. Hammer later described his father as an “avowed friend of the Jesuits.” 316 His mother died when he was fourteen years old, and he entered the Oriental Academy (Kaiserlich-königliche Akademie für Orientalische Sprachen) shortly thereafter. Empress Maria Theresa founded the Academy in 1753 to train young men (so- called Sprachknaben) for Habsburg diplomatic service, and in Hammer’s time, it sent graduates to various posts in the Ottoman Empire.317 Students at the Academy learned Turkish, Persian and

Arabic as well as other subjects such as geography and philosophy. Hammer stayed at the

Academy for nine years rather than the usual four as he waited for a diplomatic post to open.

313 Beiser, Romantic Imperative, 17.

314 Beiser, Romantic Imperative, 15.

315 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (Wien: Hölder-Pichler- Tempsky, 1940), 180.

316 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen,12.

317 Paula Sutter Fichtner, Terror and Toleration: The Habsburg Empire Confronts Islam, 1526- 1850 (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 122.

Jesuits had a profound influence on Hammer’s upbringing. The school was under the direction of the Jesuits before their disbandment, and in Hammer’s time the director, Franz

Hoeck, was a former Jesuit, described by Hammer as the “typical bigot.”318 The students’ studies were organized around Catholic religious practice. In his memoirs, Hammer described how he woke up at 6 AM for morning prayers with the other students before heading to mass with the Dominicans at 7 AM.319 The students then had their lessons in oriental languages, philosophy, geography, history and other subjects until 8 PM, after which there was a supper followed by the rosary and night prayers.

During his school years in Vienna, Hammer had two important mentors, both from the clergy. The first was Abbé Bruck, a former Jesuit, who was the prefect of the Gymnasium bei St.

Anna.320 Bruck was a friend of Hammer’s father, who had placed the younger Hammer under

Bruck’s supervision when he took him to Vienna. Hammer described Bruck as a “mentor and father figure” who was “one of the most broad-minded, educated and original minds that I have come across in my life.”321 The second mentor was Hammer’s confessor, the Franciscan priest

Mecerlaien. Hammer described him as “a true sage beneath the frock, a philosophical mind who preached Kant.”322 He also described him as a “caring friend of youth that I fervently admired until his death in my later years.”323

318 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 18, 22.

319 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 21.

320 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 4.

321 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 20.

322 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 22.

323 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 22.

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History and poetry were also important to Hammer during his formative years. He met the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller (1752-1809), one of the most influential historians of his time and helped him with his 24-volume universal history.324 Hammer himself later wrote an important historical work, the four-volume Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches.325 One of his first published literary works from this time was a short poem to his patrons at the school, which praised the Orient. 326 For Hammer, history and poetry were combined. In his memoirs, he recalled how he studied poetry during this time, since “poetry is essential to the complete understanding of a people and their spiritual and intellectual (geistig) development. I especially wanted to thoroughly study the poets of the Orient (Morgenland) and then turn towards history.”327 Hammer kept this lifelong interest in the intersection of the two fields.

Hammer went to Istanbul in 1799 on his first mission in what would be a short diplomatic career. 328 During his assignment in Istanbul, he had a brief mission to Egypt from 1800-2 to report on conditions after Napoleon’s invasion. From Istanbul, he was appointed to Jassy in 1806 before being called back to Vienna the following year, due to a disagreement with his superiors, where he then served as a court translator.329 After Napoleon’s forces took Vienna in May 1809,

324 Johannes von Müller, Vier und zwanzig Bücher allgemeiner Geschichten besonders der Europäischen Menschheit (Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1811).

325 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (Pest, C. A. Hartleben, 1834-36).

326 Joseph von Hammer, “Asia,” Der neue Teutsche Merkur, September 1797.

327 Hammer-Purgstall, Erinnerungen, 34.

328 For a brief description of Hammer’s collecting activities, see Caroline Finkel, “Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's English Translation of the First Books of Evliya Çelebi's Seyahatnâme,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 25, no. 1 (2015), 43-46.

329 Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Lebenserinnerungen (Bachofen manuscript), Buch XV, Heft 5.

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Hammer spent six months in Paris between December 1809 and May 1810 to get back oriental manuscripts taken from the royal library (Kaiserliche Bibliothek) and the Oriental Academy by

French soldiers. He relied on a network of diplomats and orientalists that he had cultivated through correspondence, including the famed French orientalist Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838), to successfully complete this task. In 1816, he married Caroline von Henikstein, the daughter of banker and Mozart patron Joseph von Henikstein (1768-1838). In 1835, Hammer inherited the estates of Countess Purgstall, the wife of his friend Gottfried Wenzel von Purgstall (1773-1812).

He then adopted the name “Hammer-Purgstall” and lived on the estate, called Schloss Hainfeld.

Like Diez, Hammer dedicated his time to translating manuscripts he had collected in the

Ottoman Empire after his diplomatic service. He published numerous German translations of

Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature: Hafiz’s Divan (1812), 1001 Nights (1823-4), Baki’s

Divan (1825) as well as several works of Persian and Arabic literary history.330 His ten-volume

330 Selected bibliography: Der Diwan des Mohammed Schemsed din Hafis. 2 vols. (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1812); Rosenöl, erstes Fläschchen oder, Sagen und Kunden des Morgenlandes: aus arabischen, persischen und türkischen Quellen gesammelt. 2 vols. (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1813); Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens: Mit einer Blüthenlese aus zweihundert persischen Dichtern (Wien: Heubner und Volke, 1818); Die Geschichte der Assassinen aus morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1818); (with August Ernst Zinserling) Der Tausend und Einen Nacht noch nicht übersezte Mährchen, Erzählungen und Anekdoten (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1823,); Baki’s, des größten türkischen Lyrikers, Diwan (Wien: C. F. Beck, 1825); Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. 10 vols. (Pest: C.A Hartleben, 1827); Literaturgeschichte der Araber, vom ihrem Beginne bis zu Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts der Hidschret (k.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1850); Geschichte der Chane der Krim unter osmanischer Herrschaft: als Anhang zur Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs (Wien: k.k. Hof- u. Staatsdruckerei, 1856). For a full bibliography, see:

Constantin Wurzbach, “Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von,” Biographisches Lexikon des Kaisertums Österreich (Wien: k.k. Hof u. Staatsdruckerei, 1861), 269.

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history of the Ottoman Empire (1827-33), based on Ottoman sources, remains in use today. His translation of Hafiz’s Divan, in addition to Diez’s Buch des Kabus, influenced Goethe.331

The Qur’an as National Epic

Hammer published a translation of excerpts of the Qur’an in several parts over multiple volumes of the journal Fundgruben des Orients from 1811-1814.332 He began with the last forty chapters (75-114) in the second volume of the journal. 333 These are the shortest chapters, lending themselves easier to translation, and Hammer translated almost all of the verses.

Hammer then translated chapters from the beginning of the Qur’an, choosing excerpts that were frequently used in Ottoman religious practice.334

The goal of Hammer’s translation was to capture the original poetry of the Qur’an. The

Qur’an argues that its language is evidence of divine origin and a human author is incapable of producing such a work.335 Hammer would have been familiar with this concept from his training at the Oriental Academy, and he described the Qur’an as a poetic masterpiece in his translation,

331 Shafiq Shamel, Goethe and Hafiz: Poetry and History in the West-Östlicher Divan (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013).

332 The translation spans over multiple volumes of the journal: Joseph von Hammer, “Die letzten vierzig Suren des Korans Die letzten vierzig Suren des Korans als eine Probe einer gereimten Uebersetzung desselben,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 25-46; Joseph von Hammer, “Fortsetzung der Proben einer neuen Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 336-358; Joseph von Hammer, “Fortsetzung der Probe einer Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 3 (1813), 231-261; Joseph von Hammer, “Probe einer Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 4 (1814), 68-86. Although the final edition ended with “to be continued,” it was not.

333 See Appendix A for a details about Hammer’s translation of specific verses.

334 Hammer, “Fortsetzung der Proben einer neuen Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2, 336.

335 Qur’an 2:23, 10:38, 11:13, 17:88. See also Jan Loop, “Divine Poetry? Early Modern European Orientalists on the Beauty of the Koran,” Church History and Religious Culture 89, no. 4 (2009): 455–88.

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writing, “the Qur’an is not only Islam’s code of law, but also a masterpiece of Arabic poetry.”336

Hammer explained that the beauty of the poetry is believed to be evidence of its divine authorship. Hammer wrote, “The living word, that left the seven divine poems hanging on the

Kaaba far behind,337 could not be the fruit of human zeal, it must have been spoken in heaven and written since eternity. Hence, the Qur’an is God’s word.”338 For Hammer, the significance of the Qur’an lies in its aesthetic representation, which could be seen as proof of divine revelation.

Hammer’s translation sharply contrasted the first translation of the Qur’an from Arabic into German, which was published by theologian David Megerlin in 1772 and was still in wide circulation in Hammer’s time. Megerlin described the Qur’an and Muhammad in apocalyptic terms. He wrote that Muhammad was “the false prophet and greatest Antichrist” and the Muslim declaration of faith calculated “exactly to 666…the name and the mark of the beast.”339 The purpose of translating the Qur’an, for Megerlin, was to “convince about its falsehood.”340

Megerlin’s translation was criticized as a “wretched production” in a review in the Frankfurter

Gelehrten Anzeigen, which was most likely written by the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

336 Joseph von Hammer, “Die letzten vierzig Suren,” 25.

337 This refers to the Mu‘allaqāt, a collection of the best seven poems in pre-Islamic Arabia that that were reportedly suspended from the Ka’aba. See Arthur John Arberry, The Seven Odes: The First Chapter in Arabic Literature (New York: Macmillan Company, 1957).

338 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben einer Uebersetzung des Korans,”Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 25.

339 David Friedrich Megerlin, Die Türkische Bibel oder des Korans allererste teutsche Uebersetzung aus der Arabischen Urschrift (Johann Gottlieb Garbe: Frankfurt am Main, 1772), 25.

340 Megerlin, Die Türkische Bibel, 26.

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(1749-1832).341 Goethe wrote, “we wish that someday another [translation] would be made under an oriental sky, by a German who read the Qur’an in his tent with a feeling for poetry and prophecy and had sense enough to bring it all together. For where is our Sale?”342 This referred to the translation conducted by George Sale from Arabic to English, which was known to the

German-speaking world through a German translation of Sale’s work by Theodor Arnold

(1746).343 In a sense, Hammer’s translation answered this call for a poetic translation and was a breakthrough in German translations of the Qur’an in that it represented the Qur’an in a positive light.

Hammer’s focus on poetry led him to concentrate on the meter of the Qur’an. He argued that the “truest” translation of the Qur’an must capture the “form” in addition to its “spirit.”344

For Hammer, this meant that the translation must preserve end rhymes from the original text, which had never before been done in any European language.345 The scholar Johann Fück argued

341 Katharina Mommsen, Goethe und der Islam (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 2001), 31. Mommsen convincingly argues that the review was most likely written by Goethe, although it is unsigned.

342 Mommsen, Goethe und der Islam, 31.

343 George Sale, The Koran Translated Into English Immediately from the Original Arabic, with Explanatory Notes, Taken from the Most Approved Commentators To Which Is Prefixed a Preliminary Discourse (London: C. Ackers, 1734; Translation by Theodor Arnold: Der Koran, Oder insgemein so genannte Alcoran des Mohammeds (Lemgo: Johann Heinrich Meyer, 1746). Sale’s translation attempted to correct the image of Islam presented by polemical translations, although Sale argues in the dedication, preface and introduction (“Preliminary Discourse”) that Islam is a false religion that is inferior to Christianity. Sale describes his translation as keeping “somewhat scrupulously close to the text,” and writes, “the stile I have made use of will not only give a more genuine idea of the original than if I had taken more liberty… for we must not expect to read a version of so extraordinary a book with the same ease and pleasure as a modern composition” (vii). Hammer takes this approach one step further by attempting to capture the original form itself by preserving end rhymes.

344 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 25.

345 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 25.

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that this attention to poetic form seemed to be an exclusively German approach.346 He stated the purpose of his translation was to present “the true representation of the Qur’an as a work of poetry.”347 For Hammer, the form of the Qur’an resembled poetry that demanded a rhyming translation. He rendered Surat al-Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an, for example, into the following rhyming verse:

In Namen Gottes des Allerbarmers des Allgütigen Lob sey Gott dem Herrn der Welten Voll Erbarmung Huld und Gnad’, Ihm dem Richter am End’ der Welten! Wir dienen Dir und flehn Dich an Wollst uns leiten auf geraden Pfad Derer, denen Du nicht zürnend gnädig warst, und die nicht irren.

Hammer’s translation did not capture the original Arabic rhyme scheme, which has a long

“i” at the end of each verse. Instead, Hammer rendered it into verses with alternating rhyming patterns. The first and third lines have “Welten” and the second, fourth and fifth lines have a long

“a.” Although this is not an exact replica of the original rhyme scheme, Hammer attempted to capture what he believed was the melody of the original. Rendering it into rhyming German, for

Hammer, captured the original best because it reflected the poetic nature of the text. In translations of parts of the Qur’an, Hammer did completely replicate the end rhyme. For example, Hammer translated the beginning of Sura 75 (Al-Qiyamah) into German as follows:

Ich schwöre nicht beim jüngsten Gericht!

Und bey der Seele nicht, die selbst sich los nicht spricht.

Glaubt denn der Mensch, wir versammeln seine Gebeine nicht?

Wir vermögen zu ordnen seine Finger mit Maas und Gewicht. 348

346 Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1955), 161.

347 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 336.

348 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 26.

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Here, the end rhyme carefully preserved from the original, which ends in a long a in every line.

Hammer similarly has the same ending in each line, which is “icht,” in “Gericht,” “spricht,”

“nicht,” and “Gewicht.” This is an example of how Hammer strove to preserve the rhyme scheme of the original text.

Hammer’s concern with poetic meter carried over to his other work. While in Istanbul, he began a translation of Divan-i Hafiz, a collection of poems by the Persian poet Hafiz.349

Hammer’s Hafiz translation also attempted to keep the form of the poems, including the ghazal, a short Persian poetic form with monorhyimg end rhymes, was new to German poetry. Later writers, such as August von Platen and Friedrich Rückert, would also write poems in German that utilized the ghazal’s rhyme scheme.350 Interest in the ghazal was part of a wider interest in new poetic forms in romantic poetry. For example, the sonnet also made a comeback in German poetry through August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translations of Shakespeare, and Rückert and Goethe also wrote sonnets. Thus Hammer’s concentration on rhyme schemes can be seen as part of a larger interest in poetic form during the Romantic era.

Hammer’s experience in Istanbul, where he heard the Qur’an recited, may have also contributed to his interest in its poetic form. In his memoirs, Hammer recounted hearing the

Qur’an recited by students who swayed to its cadence.351 Hammer also heard various parts of the

349 Constantin Wurzbach, “Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von,” Biographisches Lexikon des Kaisertums Österreich (Wien: k.k. Hof u. Staatsdruckerei, 1861), 269.

350 August Graf von Platen Hallermünde (1821) Ghaselen. Erlangen: Carl Heyder and Friedrich Rückert (1822) Oestliche Rosen, Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus.

351 Archive of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Lebenserinnerungen (Bachofen manuscript), Book VI/27.

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Qur’an recited as prayers, with which he displayed an intimate familiarity.352 In the introduction to one of the excerpts, for example, Hammer described how the Qur’an was used in various

Ottoman practices. He wrote how the verses from Surah 3 are often cited by chroniclers about changes in rulership (“Gott! Herr der Reiche! Du gibst die Herrschaft wem Du willst…”) and the verses from Surah 4 (“Die nicht glauben an unsere Zeichen, wir werfen sie ins Feuer hinein…”) are often inscribed in mausoleums.353 He drew a comparison between the Fatiha and Our Father

(Vaterunser), which he noted both have seven verses and whose reading is requested on gravestones in both Austria and the Ottoman Empire (“wie auf unseren Grabsteinen um ein

Vaterunser gebeten wird, so auf den Grabsteinen der Moslimen um ein Fatiha für die Ruhe der

Abgeschiedenen.”)354

Hammer believed German was the best language for a translation of the Qur’an because it was, in his view, an Ursprache. In order to capture the poetic form properly, according to

Hammer, a translation of the Qur’an that captures its original form “could not be done truer in any European language other than German.”355 Hammer wrote:

No language escapes from the peculiarities of foreign genius less than the trusting Teutonic language, like for its sons, no stretch of the earth is foreign to it, it entices the original seed from each and every soil. It strolls with love and delight not only in the shade of the Ilissos and up the hills of Tibur, but also in the rose fields of Shiraz and in the palm groves of Mecca. It follows the Bedouins in the desert, and there it listens to the measured and rhyming words of the Qur’an, playing back its sound and motion. That way, therefore, the effect can be produced that does not miss an Arabic ear. Thus the

352 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 336.

353 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 336, 343.

354 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 336.

355 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 25.

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translation for us will not only be a mirror showing the Prophet’s image, but it will also catch breaths of poetry from his mouth.356

Like Johann Fichte (1762-1814), whose Addresses to the German Nation (Reden an die deutsche

Nation, 1807-08) were delivered three years before, Hammer believed that German was one of the original human languages (Ursprachen) that, unlike French and Spanish, escaped the corrupting influence of Latin (here described as “foreign genius”), making it stronger, more powerful, and historical.357 Since other languages descended from German, Hammer argued, all nations of the earth have a connection to the German-speaking world (“no stretch of the earth is foreign to it”). Thus Hammer argues that the poetic effect of the Arabic in the Qur’an has an origin in German and, therefore, a translation into German is the only way to capture the same poetic effect.

Powerful poetic effects, for Hammer, can be harnessed for political state building, and

Hammer viewed the formation of the early Muslim community around the Qur’an as a model for

German unification. Hammer built upon Johann Gottfried von Herder’s (1744-1803) On the

Influence of Poetry on the Morals of Nations in Ancient and Recent Times (Ueber die Würkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Völker in alten und neuen Zeiten, 1778), which viewed the development of Islam in relation to the poetry of the Qur’an. Ian Almond writes, “the rise of

356 “Keine Sprache flieht weniger vor den Eigenheiten des fremden Genius zurück als die zutrauliche Sprache Teut’s, die wie seine Söhne keinem Himmelsstriche fremd, jedem Boden die Keime seiner eigenthümlichen Kultur entlockt, und sorgsam bewahret. Mit Liebe und Lust wandelt sie nicht nur in den Schattengängen des Ilissus und auf Tiburs Hügeln, sondern auch auf den Rosenfluren von Schiras und in Mekka’s Palmenhainen. Sie folgt dem Beduinen in der Wüste, und horchet dort den Worten des Korans den wohlabgemessenen den gereimten, deren Gang und Klang sie nachahmend wiedergiebt...So wird uns die Uebersetzung als Spiegel nicht nur das Bild des Propheten zeigen, sondern auch den Dichterodem aus seinem Munde auffangen.“ Hammer, “Proben einer gereimten Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 26.

357 For an overview of the idea of the Germanic Ursprache, see Benes, In Babel’s Shadow, 113– 58.

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Islam contained for Herder a number of important lessons for the formation of a Volk, particularly concerning the essential role of poetry and language in this process.”358 For Hammer, the rapid spread of Islam in the seventh centuries was a result of this unifying capacity of language, and this could be a model for a unified German state based on the power of a shared language.

Hammer’s poetic approach to the Qur’an reflected the notion of romantic poetry, which viewed poetry as the essence of creation. He sought to understand the esoteric power of the word to unite people into a community, and viewed the Qur’an and early Muslim community as an example of the power of the word to unite. Hammer wrote, “The divinity of creativity is reflected in works of poetry. Arabs worshipped this inhale and exhale of the Divine before

Muhammad in their great poets…”359 The power of creativity, represented in poetry, is in its spoken form, which is tied to the breath. Hammer argued that Muhammad harnessed this power for the purpose of state-building, writing, “The son of Abdullah [Muhammad] could proffer only the most powerful linguistic charm as the word of God.”360 He built upon the notion of the

Qur’an as a spell or charm, writing “Muhammad subjugated his people less by the sword than by

358 Ian Almond, History of Islam in German Thought from Leibniz to Nietzsche (New York: Routledge, 2010), 65.

359 “In den Werken der Dichtkunst spiegelt sich die Gottheit des Genius (creativity) ab. Diesen Einhauch und Aushauch der Gottheit beteten die Araber schon vor Mohammed in ihren großen Dichtern an…” Hammer, “Proben einer gereimten Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 25.

360 Hammer, “Proben einer gereimten Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811), 25.

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the power of language.”361 The rhyme of the Qur’an was part of the power of this linguistic spell, which Hammer also described as a siren’s call (Sirenton). 362

In sum, Hammer saw in the Qur’an an example of how rhetorical power of language united a nation (the early Muslim community) much like the German nation sought to unite around a shared language in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. The confluence of language, nation and poetry could be seen as a model for the German community to unite around language and a leader. For Hammer, the rhyme of the Qur’an was central to its linguistic power, which is why he attempted to translate it into rhyming German. This rhetorical power could be harnessed to form a state, which is how Hammer understood the formation of the early Muslim community.

Hammer also used Arabic, including Qur’anic verses, extensively in his personal life, although there is not any evidence he converted to Islam. He decorated his castle in Styria

(Steiermark) with Arabic inscriptions, possibly mirroring Ottoman practice and was buried in a grave imported from the Ottoman Empire, with Arabic, Persian, and Turkish inscriptions.363

After the death of his wife Caroline at age 48, Hammer translated an Ottoman prayer book into

German. The translation, Zeitwarte des Gebetes in sieben Tageszeiten: ein Gebetbuch arabisch und Deutsch (1844) outlines six prayers to be offered daily using verses from the Qur’an.

Hammer does not provide details about where the translation is from, but it resembles Ottoman

361 “Mohammed unterjochte sein Volk weniger durch das Schwerdt, als durch der Rede Kraft.” Hammer, “Proben einer gereimten Uebersetzung des Korans,” Fundgruben des Orients 2, no. 1 (1811): 25.

362 Joseph von Hammer, “Proben,” 25.

363 See Hannes D. Galter and Siegfried Haas, eds., Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Grenzgänger zwischen Orient und Okzident (Graz: Leykam, 2008); Walter Höflechner and Alexandra Wagner, eds., Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Erinnerungen Und Briefe (Graz: Karl-Franz-Universität Graz, 2011), 2132–2167, http://gams.uni- graz.at/archive/objects/context:hp/methods/sdef:Context/get?mode=band3.

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prayer books with verses from the Qur’an to be read at different parts of the day. Hammer was in touch with Sufi orders in Istanbul and reported that his encounter with a dervish, who was able to recite parts of Hafiz’s Divan from memory was one of his inspirations for translating it into

German.

Hammer’s use of Arabic in his personal life was probably part of a larger interest in freemasonry and esoterism. He wrote a treatise condemning those freemasons who traced their lineage to the Knights Templar, which reflected the schism within higher-grade freemasonry between Templar-inspired orders, the Rosicrucians, and the Illuminati. 364 He also wrote a history of the Assassins, which may also be a veiled attack on Templar-inspired freemasonry.365

Hammer most likely supported the Illuminati. His close friend, Wenzel Gottfried von Purgstall

(1773-1812), was one of Illuminati leader Karl Reinhold’s “favorite students” and accompanied

Reinhold on his travels, including a visit to Kant in Königsberg.366 Hammer wrote a biography of

Purgstall and eventually inherited Purgstall’s title by being adopted by Purgstall’s Scottish wife,

364 Joseph Freiherr von Hammer Hammer-Purgstall, “Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum, Seu Fratres Militiae Templi, qua Gnostici et Qudem Ophiani Apostasiae, Idoloduliae et Impuritatis Convicti per Ipsa Eorum Monumenta,” Fundgruben Des Orients 6 (1818): 3–120. See also Franz Maria Freiherr Nell von Nellenberg, Baphomet, Actenstücke zu dem durch Joseph Hammers Mysterium Baphometis relevatum wieder angeregten Prozesse gegen die Tempelherren (Gräffer, 1820).

365 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Die Geschichte der Assassinen aus morgenländischen Quellen (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1818).

366 Karl Hugelmann, “Purgstall, Gottfried Wenzel,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1888, http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd116313420.html?anchor=adb.

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Jane Anne Baronin Cranstoun (later known as Johanna Anna von Purgstall, d.1835).367

Hammer’s liberal political and religious outlook also resembled other Viennese Illuminati, although his membership in the order would need to be confirmed by lodge records.

Manuscripts and Mediation

Multiple volumes of Fundgruben des Orients also feature the poem Yusuf and Zulaykha by Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami (1414-1492), which was the fifth volume in his seven- volume collection entitled Haft Awrang (“‘The Seven Thrones”), translated by Habsburg diplomat Vinzenz von Rosenzweig (1791-1865).368 Rosenzweig was born in 1791 in Znaim

(now Znojmo, Czech Republic) to a Habsburg civil servant. He began his studies at the Oriental

Academy in Vienna at age eight and graduated when he was seventeen, then served the

Habsburg embassy in Istanbul as a Sprachknabe for five years before being stationed in

Wallachia. Upon his return to Vienna in 1817, he became a professor of Oriental Languages at the Oriental Academy, his alma-mater. In addition to a book-length version of Jami’s poem

(1824), Rosenzwieg published translations of the main masterpieces of Persian poetry that were also part of Ottoman literary tradition: Funkelnde Wandelsterne zum Lobe des Besten der

Geschöpfe (1824), selections from Rumi's Divan (1838), and Hafiz’s Divan (1858-64).369 He was ennobled, adding the name "von Schwannau" in 1854 and died eleven years later in 1865.

367 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Denkmal auf das Grab der beyden letzten Grafen von Purgstall (Wien: A. Strauss, 1821).

368 Vinzenz von Rosenzweig, “Jusuf und Suleicha,” Fundgruben des Orients 2 (1811): 47-51, 314-316, 391-402.

369 Vinzenz Ritter von Rosenzweig, Joseph und Suleicha; Historisch-romantisches Gedicht aus dem persischen des Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami (Wien: Schmid, 1824); Sharaf al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Saʻīd Būṣīrī, Funkelnde wandelsterne zum lobe des besten der geschöpfe: ein arabisches, insgemein unter den nahmen: gedicht Burde bekanntes gedicht, trans. Vincenz Rosenzweig (A. Schmid, 1824); Vincenz Rosenzweig, Auswahl aus den divanen des grössten mystischen dichters Persiens Mewlana Dschelaleddin Rumi aus dem Persischen mit beigefügten

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Jami’s poem is based on the story of Joseph (Yusuf), described both in the Bible (Genesis

37, 39-41) and the Qur’an (Sura 12, “Yusuf”), as the son of Jacob (Ya’qub) who was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers.370 His master’s wife tried to seduce him; however, he resisted her advances. Told from the perspective of Potiphar’s wife, Zuleika, Jami’s poem describes

Zuleika’s desire for Joseph as “not sinful but redemptive, for her unrequited love leads her from pagan idolatry to monotheism.”371 As such, it is a metaphor of the soul’s desire for the Divine, here expressed in Yusuf’s beauty, which differs from the Biblical narrative that focuses on

Joseph’s virtue in the face of adultery.372 Rosenzweig commented that the story was an allegory for “the love of the Highest Beauty and Goodness, a love which humans can only reach when they have, like Zuleicha, atoned through difficult tests and appear reborn.”373

Rosenzweig submitted his translation of Yusuf and Zulaykha from Istanbul during his diplomatic service. His interest in these poems, like the others, was likely informed by a

original-texte und erläutern den anmerkungen von Vincenz von Rosenzweig, 1838; Vincenz Rosenzweig-Schannau, Der Diwan Des Grossen Lyrischen Dichters Hafis Im Persischen Original Herausgegeben, Ins Deutsche Metriche Übersetzt Und Mit Anmerkungen Versehen Von V. Rosenzweig-Schwannau, 1858; Ḥâfiẓ (Shîrâzî.), Der Diwan Des Grossen Lyrischen Dichters Hafis, Im Pers. Orig. Herausg., Ins Deutsche Metrisch Übers., Und Mit Anmerkungen Versehen von V. Ritter v. Rosenzweig-Schwannau, 1863.

370 Numerous other authors have written about this story; see Shalom Goldman, The Wiles of Women/The Wiles of Men: Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife in Ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Islamic Folklore (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).

371 Jonathan David Gross, Byron: The Erotic Liberal (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 58.

372 For an overview of Christian interpretations of Joseph’s story, see James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 437–458.

373 “die Liebe des höchsten Schönen und Guten; eine Leibe, welche Menschen nur dann zu erreichen vermögen, wenn sie, wie Suleïcha, durch manche harte Prüfung gesühnt, gleichsam neugeboren erscheinen.” Rosenzweig, Joseph und Suleicha; Historisch-romantisches Gedicht aus dem persischen des Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami, vi.

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connection to Sufi lodges in Istanbul. One possibility is a connection to a Mevlevi lodge, which were centers of Persian poetry in the Ottoman capital and enjoyed great patronage under the sultans Selim III and Mahmud II, who ruled while these Habsburg diplomats were in Istanbul

(see Chapter 2). Thus these poems represented a connection between German-speaking culture and Ottoman culture: popular in Istanbul due to the importance of Mevlevi Sufism in the

Ottoman courts, they also resonated with German-speaking diplomats due to romanticism and an their interest in religion. A copy of Rosenzweig's Joseph und Suleicha made it back to the Galata

Mevlevihanesi in Istanbul.374

Another possibility (which does not exclude the first) is that Rosenzweig was in touch with a group of Ottoman intellectuals related to the Beşiktaş Cemiyet-i İlmiyesi (Beşiktaş

Scientific Society), a society that met regularly to discuss science, literature and philosophy, including European publications.375 Rosenzweig’s translation acknowledged the founder of the group, İsmail Ferruh Efendi (the Ottoman ambassador to England from 1798-1801 and had since returned to Istanbul during Rosenzweig’s stay) for assistance with difficult passages.376 This group was suspected of having links to the Bektashi order, which was banned by Sultan Mahmud

II in 1826 with the abolition of the Janissaries.377 Rosenzweig’s interest in Jami’s poem may have stemmed from affiliation with Sufi groups in Istanbul.

The Mesnevi from Istanbul to Vienna

374 Süleymaniye Library, Galata Mevlevihanesi Collection, Ms. No. 00099.

375 For an overview of the Society, see Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Syracuse University Press, 2000), 229– 232.

376 Rosenzweig, Joseph und Suleicha; Historisch-romantisches Gedicht aus dem persischen des Mewlana Abdurrahman Dschami, vi.

377 Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 231.

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The Habsburg diplomat Valentin von Huszár (also spelled Hussár, Hussard) also sent translations of several important pieces of Sufi literature from Istanbul to Vienna. Huszár was born in Vienna in 1788 to a noble family that originated in Hungary.378 His father was a state official. He enrolled at the Oriental Academy when he was ten years old and studied there for seven years. After graduating in 1807, he was sent to the Habsburg diplomatic mission in

Istanbul, where he served until 1823. Huszár lived in Istanbul for twenty years, where he gained

“an honorable and enduring reputation in the Austrian embassy and Ottoman Cabinet as a thorough linguist and a cunning and bold translator.”379 In 1823, he returned to Vienna to accompany Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) on diplomatic business, and he was promoted through the Habsburg bureaucracy, eventually reaching the position of Hofrat. He enjoyed a close relationship with the Ottoman court, and Sultan Mahmud II awarded him the Nişan-i

İftihar, the “Order of Glory,” in 1836 and a diamond box in 1839.380

Huszár married into a family of career diplomats to the Ottoman state. While he was in

Istanbul, he married Freiin Theresia von Stürmer (1791-1850), the daughter of the Habsburg ambassador to the Ottoman Porte from 1802-18, Ignaz Lorenz Stürmer (1752-1829), who was a a member of the Jesuit order before it was disbanded. Huszár’s ties to this family further consolidated his position as a career diplomat for the Austrian state’s mission in Istanbul.

Huszár’s brother-in-law, Bartholomäus von Stürmer (1787-1863), who was born in Pera, was an

378 “Rückblick in Die Vergangenheit.” Der Österreichische Zuschauer, June 26, 1837; Victor Weiss Edlem Starkenfels, Die Kaiserlich-Königliche Orientalische Akademie Zu Wien, Ihre Gründung, Fortbildung Und Gegenwärtige Einrichtung (Wien: Carl Gerold, 1839), 70.

379 “gründlicher Sprachkenner und gewandter und muthiger Dolmetsch bei der Internunziatur und dem ottomanischen Ministerium einen ehrenvollen, bleibenden Ruf” “Rückblick in Die Vergangenheit.” Der Österreichische Zuschauer, June 26, 1837.

380 See Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts in the Library of Leiden University and Other Collections in the Netherlands: Minor Collections (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 38.

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eminent diplomat who served Austria on missions throughout the world, including monitoring

Napoleon’s exile on Saint Helena and serving in the United States and Argentina before returning to the Ottoman Empire as ambassador from 1832-50.

Huszár translated the Mesnevi into German, which was the first translation of the

Mesnevi into a European language, and published it in the Fundgruben des Orients.381 The original Persian text was also printed next to the translation in the journal, which likely made it the first printed version of the poem.382 Written by Rumi, to whom the Mevlevi order traces its lineage, the Mesnevi is a 26,000-verse poem organized into six volumes. Drawing from the

Qur’an, hadith, and stories, Rumi’s work outlines his ideas about the soul’s love and longing for union with the Divine. One of the main reasons for Western interest in this poem, which was later translated into numerous European languages, has been its rooting in Neoplatonism’s concept of the “return of the soul to its divine origin,”383 which fit with European debates about deism.

Huszár's involvement with the Mevlevi order probably sparked his interest in the

Mesnevi, which is the most highly esteemed text after the Qur’an for the order. Mevlevi lodges taught the copying and recitation of this text and used it in religious practice, which had been

381 Austrian diplomat Jacques van Wallenbourg (1763-1806) reportedly began a translation of the Mesnevi into French, however the results were not published as they were destroyed in a fire in Pera in 1799. See Lewis, Rumi - Past and Present, East and West, 565. Hammer also included several excerpts of Rumi’s work in Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens: Mit einer Blüthenlese aus zweihundert persischen Dichtern (Wien: Heubner und Volke, 1818). Huszár’s translation: “Das Mesnevi” Fundgruben des Orients 2, 162-4; 3: 339-347; 4: 89-92; Vol. 5, 99-101; Vol. 6, 188-213.

382 Current evidence suggests that the journal circulated mostly in Europe, and further research is needed to determine its circulation in the Ottoman Empire.

383 Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 35th Anniversary Edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 321.

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furthered by the patronage of Sultan Selim III, who was a Mevlevi (see Chapter 2). Thus

Ottoman literary tastes at the time played probably inspired the translation of this text. Huszár carried out the translation while in Istanbul and sent it to Hammer in Vienna.

Huszár was so familiar with Mevlevi rituals that he memorized them. Upon his return to

Vienna, he sang them to the Benedictine abbot Maximilian Johann Karl Dominik Stadler (1748-

1833), an important figure in the Viennese musical scene. Abbé Stadler arranged them in

European musical notation. A publication of these songs from Stadler’s estate (Nachlass) describes the process of transmission as follows:

…The fruits of lengthy endeavors of a well-known orientalist, who not only collected the choral songs (Choralgesänge) of the Turkish monks after a long stay in Constantinople and close acquaintance with them, but also learned their melody and, in as proper a translation as possible, repeated it to the late Abbe Stadler at the piano until that interested composer put them into notes and added accompaniment.384

The process was described in further detail by Carl Engel in 1879:

The Mewlewi Dervishes, who have their name from their founder, used to perform their sacred dances in a mosque at Tophane, a suburb of Constantinople.385 Herr von Hussard, secretary to the Austrian Legation in Constantinople, a great lover of music, often witnessed these dances, or “ zikrs,” as they are called, which are executed with the musical accompaniments of singing, playing on flutes, and beating of drums; and, with care and perseverance, he succeeded in faithfully rendering the songs in our notation. Having on his return to Vienna placed the manuscript in the hands of Abbé Stadler, well known as a

384 “die Frucht langer Bemühungen eines bekannten Orientalisten, welcher nach vieljährigem Aufenthalt in Constantinopel und genauer Bekanntschaft mit den türkischen Mönchen nicht nur mehrere ihrer Choralgesänge gesammelt, sondern auch deren Melodie erlernt, und sie dann in verfaßter möglichst paßender Uebersetzung dem verewigten Abbé Stadler so lange beim Klavier wiederholte, bis dieser daran Intereße findende Compositeur sie in Noten setzte und mit Begleitung versah.” Original-Chöre der Derwische Mewlewi in arabischer, persischer und türkischer Sprache mit der möglichst wörtlichen zur Melodie genau passenden Uebersetzung ins Deutsche, Unisono für Chor oder eine Singstimme mit Begleitung des Pianoforte eingerichtet von weiland Abbé Maximilian Stadler (Vienna: Pietro Mechetti, ca. 1835), 1. This book is undated, however it mentions Stadler’s death and a review of it was published in 1839, so it was most likely published between 1833-1839. Review by G. W. Fink in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, No. 22, 1839, p. 414-5.

385 This probably refers to the Galata Mevlevihane.

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musician and as friend of Mozart, Stadler wrote an accompaniment to the songs, contrived in his usual manner, which would probably have astonished the Dervishes, could they have heard it.386

The reference to a mosque in Tophane most likely refers to the Galata Mevlevihane, which is the closest Mevlevi Lodge in that area and has a history of European visitors (see

Chapter 2). The published version includes about 59 hymns. That Huszár was able to memorize them speaks to his frequent visits and closeness to the lodge. Huszar’s familiarity with copying manuscripts, Mevlevi rituals, and the Mesnevi indicates that he spent a lot of time at the Mevlevi lodge. At this time, there is not any evidence that he converted to Islam or joined the Mevlevi order, and the continued patronage of his father-in-law Stürmer, a former Jesuit, as well as his acquaintance with the Benedictine abbot Stadler suggests a sympathy towards those Catholic religious orders which were in favor with the Habsburg court at the time. The relationship between Catholic religious orders, which had a presence in Pera, and the Galata Mevlevihanesi merits further research.387

Huszár was also likely in contact with the Bektashi order and also sent a translation of a poem from Istanbul entitled, “Verse vom Dervische Seid Reefet.” 388 Echoing the dervish's exhortation on the people of Istanbul in Diez's translation of Ermahnungen an Islambol

386 Carl Engel, The Literature of National Music (London: Novello, Ewer & Co., 1879), 16.

387 Several Catholic religious orders were affiliated with churches in Pera, including the Benedictines (Church of Saint Benoit, which was connected to the French embassy), and there is a longer history of Catholic missions (especially of the Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit orders) in the Ottoman Empire. See Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 121; Mehmet Ali Doğan, “Missionary Schools,” ed. Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Alan Masters, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 384–388.

388 [Valentin] Hussard, “Verse Vom Dervisch Seid Reefet Bei Gelegenheit Der Letzten Revolution Zu Constantinopel,” Fundgruben Des Orients 1 (1809): 219.Fundgruben des Orients 1, 219 (1809).

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(described in Chapter 3), Said Rifat lamented the deposition of Selim III by the Janissaries, which happened shortly before Huszár sent the translation to the Fundgruben des Orients. Thus it was a contemporary report of the political situation in Istanbul, which Huszár described as a

“Revolution.” Huszár’s translation reads in full:

Esel sind wir ganz mit Gier belastet We are donkeys laden with greed Hunde sind wir trockne Beine nagend. We are dogs gnawing on dry bones Wir gedeihen bei der Scheelsucht Regen, We thrive in the rain of envy Wir sind Blumen auf dem Feld der Lüste. We are flowers in the field of desires Käme Plato Wahrheit zu enthüllen, If Plato came to uncover Truth Stopften wir das Maul ihm wie dem Fasse. We plugged his mouth like a faucet Löwen sind wir, achten nicht der Weiber, We are lions, we do not look after the women Fallen an die Armen wie die Hunde. And attack the poor like dogs Ankas sind wir, doch wie Fliegen schwärmen We are bees, but we swarm like flies Wir so um den Koth als um den Honig. Around the dung like it is honey Kann der Bau des Unheils wohl verfallen Can the building of disaster cease Wenn wir stats die Dummheit unterstützen! When we instead support foolishness? Seit der Kaiser annehm Deine Treue Since the day the Emperor accepted your loyalty Wachest du Reefet an seiner Pforte.389 Rifat, you watch over his Porte

In a footnote to the poem, Huszár noted how Said Rifat supported the Nizam-ı Cedid, and

“proved its necessity out of the Qur’an itself.”390 The poem criticized the Janissaries for overthrowing Selim III, warning that they are building disaster by supporting foolishness. Rifat characterized the rebellious Janissaries as succumbing to desires such as greed and envy and failing to protect women and the poor. Although traditionally the Janissaries had been affiliated with the Bektashi order, Said Rifat was also reportedly a member of the order, suggesting that there perhaps was support for Nizam-ı Cedid within some Bektashi circles. 391 In the footnote,

Huszár also described how Said Rifat was seized by Janissaries during the revolt against Selim

III and reportedly thrown into the sea, although there were reports he survived, and noted that he

389 Ibid.

390 Ibid.

391 Huszár writes ”Behdshet.”

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"knew him personally and regrets the loss of this man and his work.”392 Huszár's translations of this poem, as well as his translation of the Mesnevi and memorization of Mevlevi hymns, suggest he was involved with the Mevlevi and Bektashi orders while in Istanbul.

Conclusion

The translations by Habsburg diplomat-orientalists in Fundgruben des Orients suggest a yet-unexplored connection between Habsburg diplomats and Sufi orders in Istanbul. Joseph von

Hammer, possibly informed by contact with Sufi lodges, published a rhyming translation of the

Qur’an in German that sought to capture what he understood as a strong example of the rhetorical power of poetry for state-building. Inspired by Fichte, Hammer drew upon nationalist ideas that viewed German as an Ursprache and viewed what he saw as the Qur’an’s power to unite the early Muslim community as an example for the building of a future German state.

Other Habsburg diplomats, such as Vincenz von Rosenzweig and Valentin Huszár, were in contact with the Mevlevi and Bektashi orders while in Istanbul and translated prominent works of poetry from the lodges.

392 “Der Uebersetzer der ihn persönlich kannte, bedauert den Verlust des Mannes und seiner Werke,” Hussard, “Verse Vom Dervisch Seid Reefet Bei Gelegenheit Der Letzten Revolution Zu Constantinopel.”

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Chapter 5: Dueling Futures, Dueling Orientalisms

“One must completely refrain from such translations,” thundered the Orientalist Heinrich von Diez in 1809, “because it is not befitting to misrepresent Easterners and to deceive

Westerners by putting invented essays in the name of the former that do not belong to them in any way.”393 With these words, Diez started a war against European translators of oriental literature in one of their major journals of the time, Fundgruben des Orients.394 His ire was especially aimed at French translators who, according to Diez, published fabricated tales as translations. Diez’s condemnation of European oriental studies attracted the wrath of Joseph von

Hammer, the editor of the Fundgruben des Orients, who leapt to the defense of the field by criticizing Diez’s work in the Fundgruben as well as two other literary outlets, the Jenaische

Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung and the Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung.395 Diez responded with a 600-page refutation of Hammer’s claims, entitled Unfug und Betrug in der

393 “...dass man solche Uebersetzen würde ganz unterlassen müsse, weil es sich nicht geziemt, die Morgenländer zu entstellen um die Abendländer zu täuschen, indem man selbst ausgedachte Aufsätze auf den Namen der erstern sezt, denen sie keineswegs angehören...,” Heinrich von Diez, “Ermahnungen an Islambol,” Fundgruben Des Orients 1 (1809): 250.

394 This is how the translators referred to their field.

395 These reviews were published anonymously but attributed to Hammer and Thomas Chabert. “Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung,” Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, January 1813, 49–62; “Über Inhalt und Vortrag, Entstehung und Schicksale des königliches Buchs, eines Werks von der Regierungskunst,” Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, January 1813, 61–72; “Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung,” Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, February 2, 1813, 147–52; 166–71; “Buch des Kabus oder Lehren des persischen Königs Kjekjawus für seinen Sohn Ghilan Schach,” Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, May 14, 1813, 616–24; “Über Inhalt und Vortrag, Entstehung und Schicksale des königliches Buchs, eines Werks von der Regierungskunst,” Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, July 6, 1813, 858–64; “Wesentliche Betrachtungen, oder Geschichte des Krieges zwischen den Osmanen und Russen in den Jahren 1768 bis 1774,” Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, May 16, 1815, 609–16.

morgenländischen Litteratur, that personally attacked Hammer’s character and education, to which Hammer responded by publishing his own defense and counterattack on Diez, entitled

Fug und Wahrheit, which ended with a plea to the Berlin Academy of Sciences to intervene. At the heart of the battle was the representation – or, as Diez argued, misrepresentation - of the

Orient. 396

Why did Diez and Hammer fight so bitterly over translations of Ottoman texts? This chapter shows how Diez’s and Hammer’s feud was part of a larger battle between competing religious and political positions in the German-speaking world after the Napoleonic wars. As a conservative, Diez advocated for an enlightened monarchy and a state grounded in Biblical law and was a staunch critic of new forms of governance and religious interpretation (see Chapter 3).

Diez published translations of Ottoman advice literature in an attempt to publicize these views.

In contrast, Hammer supported a liberal vision of the future, which included a strong leader that could unite the German-speaking world through the power of language (see Chapter 4). At the heart of Diez’s critique of the field of oriental literature was his belief that the purpose of translation was to understand other cultures, not to entertain readers, which led him to focus on the importance of accuracy. This was necessary for Diez’s political program, since only through accurate translation could Ottoman ideas be understood and possibly adopted for Prussian politics. This chapter starts with an examination of Diez’s critique of French orientalism and

Hammer’s counterargument and then reveals how the debate was about deeper political issues including German nationalism and religion.

In the early nineteenth century, there were two main groups, both of would be described as orientalists. The first consisted of university professors who translated ancient texts mostly

396 For an overview of the feud, see Katharina Mommsen, Goethe und Diez (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), 8-24.

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related to the Bible. This field was known as orientalism (Orientalistik) and included figures such as the biblical scholar Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791). Writing in 1815, Diez defined

“orientalist” as: “a public teacher who combines Biblical literature with knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic.”397 The second group was composed of self-described “enthusiasts” (Liebhaber) who were not involved with universities. Diez and Hammer were both in this category, although the relationship of the “enthusiasts” to the “orientalists” was under dispute.398 In contrast to the university-trained professors, they had real-world experience in the Middle East.

Although Diez and Hammer had both been diplomats in Istanbul, there were several fundamental differences in their backgrounds. First, Hammer trained as a Sprachknaben at the

Oriental Academy in Vienna (k.k. Akademie für Orientalische Sprachen), where he learned

Turkish, Persian and Arabic, before his diplomatic service in Istanbul 1799-1806. In contrast,

Diez studied at a top university, the University of Halle, and learned Ottoman in Istanbul from

Ottomans. Second, Hammer was about a generation younger than Diez. Whereas Diez was excited by the ideas of the Enlightenment in his youth, the French Revolution and Romanticism defined Hammer’s early thought. Third, Diez came from Protestant Prussia and was an orthodox

Lutheran, whereas Hammer came from the Habsburg Empire and was a Catholic. The political rivalry between Prussia and the Habsburg Empire for domination of the German-speaking world

(German dualism) may have also contributed to their dispute.

Diez’s Critique of French Orientalism

397 Heinrich von Diez, Unfug und Betrug: in der morgenländischen Litteratur (Halle: Buchhandlung des Hallischen Waisenhauses, 1815), 154.

398 They both considered themselves “enthusiasts.” Whereas Diez considered this a separate category, Hammer considered enthusiasts also part of the larger group of orientalists. See Heinrich von Diez, Unfug und Betrug, 154.

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Diez took aim at a group of late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century French translators of Persian, Turkish, and Arabic texts who remained widely-read in Diez’s time. This group had its origins in Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s (1619-1683) initiatives to gather knowledge from Persia and the Ottoman Empire in the interest of securing trade routes for the French East India Company (Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales), founded in 1664. Namely, he sent young men to gather manuscripts and artifacts from Persia and the Ottoman Empire and founded a language school to train translators, the École des Jeunes de langues, in 1669. Two of these men, Antoine Galland (1646 –1715) and François Pétis de La

Croix (1653–1713), translated several notable works upon their return to France.399

Galland’s famous twelve-volume translation, Les Mille et Une Nuits (The Thousand and

One Nights, 1704-17), was a combination of translations from part of an original Arabic manuscript, other Arabic sources, and material that was either invented or translated from unknown sources.400 Galland’s translation was most likely motivated by the success of the fairy tale (contes des fées) in French literature during this time.401 Through translations such as

Galland’s, “oriental” fairy tales became a “second phase of the fairy-tale vogue” in French literature.402 Galland was involved with other projects, such as the completion of Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville’s (1625-1695) Bibliothèque orientale (1697), which remained the

399 For an overview of Galland’s travels in the Ottoman Empire, see M. S. Mahdi, The Thousand and One Nights (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 12–17.

400 Dwight Reynolds, “A Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and Its Reception,” in Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Roger Allen and D. S. Richards (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 277. The original manuscript in Galland’s possession had 282 tales; he apparently added more to meet his publisher’s demands. See

401 Ibid., 280.

402 Jack Zipes, When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2013), 43.

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major authority in Europe on oriental literature in Diez’s time. He also began a translation of the so-called Fables of Bidpai (Contes et fables indiennes de Bidpai et de Lokman, 1724), which was finished by the French translator Denis Dominique Cardonne (1721-1783).

Cardonne represented the second generation of this group of French translators who had experience in the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Paris and spent twenty years in Istanbul from age nine. He became a translator and Professor of Persian and Turkish at the Royal College in

France upon his return to France. Cardonne was a teacher of Silvestre de Sacy (1758-1838), who subsequently taught Arabic at the Collège de France and published numerous grammars and translations of Arabic works. De Sacy was the founder of modern orientalism, as Edward Said noted, since “his work virtually put before the profession an entire systematic body of texts, a pedagogic practice, a scholarly tradition, and an important link between Oriental scholarship and public policy.”403 De Sacy and Diez were of the same generation, and as this chapter shows, the birth of the field of modern orientalism was not without controversy.

In his first publication after returning to Berlin from Istanbul, Ermahnungen an Islambol in the 1809 volume of the Fundgruben des Orients (see Chapter 3), Diez attacked the first and second generation of French translators for their imaginative translations that often strayed from the original texts. Diez used the introduction to critique Cardonne’s previous translation of the poem, which had been published as “Satyre de Veisi Efendi contre les moeurs de don siècle etc” as part of a larger collection of translations entitled Mélanges de Littérature Orientale (1770).

Diez identified two main problems with Cardonne’s translation. First, Cardonne only translated the first seven lines of the poem as the entire text, although the original poem had thirty-two lines. Second, Diez argued, the seven lines that Cardonne translated were so “butchered”

403 Said, Orientalism, 124.

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(verhunzt), “that one can only glimpse particular words here and there while searching in vain for the true and complete meaning of the original.”404 Diez accused Cardonne of fabricating the material instead of presenting an accurate translation.

Diez argued that these imaginative translations should be avoided, because they misrepresent the East. Diez compared Cardonne’s translation with Galland’s, writing:

Mr. Cardonne would surely reply what von Galland and others have already said in similar cases - that the original [translated] in French would neither be printed nor read. If that is the case, then it only follows that one most completely refrain from such translations, because it is not befitting to misrepresent Easterners and to deceive Westerners by putting invented essays in the name of the former that do not belong to them in any way, and making it impossible for the latter to precisely get to know the particular differences between Easterners in spirit, ideas, ethics, laws, conditions and religion; Asians and Europeans travel such different paths of moral and spiritual life or so-called culture, that the border that separates them is just as noticeable in their speech and writings as in their way of life. 405

The French translations, for Diez, “deceive” Europeans by falsely attributing words to the original authors that are really added by the translators. In way, Diez viewed himself as exposing the translations as frauds. For Diez, the purpose of translation was to gain knowledge from the East, which necessitates accuracy. Diez argued against the French form of translation

404 “dass man nur hier und da einzelne Wörter des Originals durchschimmern sieht, den wahren und ganzen Sinn desselben aber vergeblich sucht.” Diez, “Ermahnungen an Islambol,” 250.

405 “Hr. Cardonne würde frezlich antworten, was von Galland und adern in ähnlichen Fällen schon gesagt worden, dass sich das Original im Französischen weder würde ausdrücken noch lesen lassen. Wen dem so wäre, so würde daraus nur folgen, dass man solche Ueberseten würde ganz unterlassen müsse, weil es sich nicht geziemt, die Morgenländer zu entstellen um die Abendländer zu täuschen, indem man selbst ausgedachte Aufsätze auf den Namen der erstern sezt, denen sie keineswegs angehören und es den letztern unmöglich macht, gerade das Eigenthümliche kennen zu lernen, wodurch sich Morgenländer in ihrem Geist, in ihren Vorstellungsarten, Sitten, Gesetzen und Verfassungen und ihrer Religion von Abendländern unterscheiden; denn Asiaten und Europäer wandeln auf so verschiedenen Wegen des sittlichen und geistigen Lebens oder der sogenannten Cultur, dass die Scheide wodurch beyde getrennt werden, in ihren Reden und Schriften eben so auffallend ist als in ihrer äussern Lebensart.“ Ibid., 250–1.

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because, in the interest of gaining readers, translators distorted the cultural differences that are the very reason for translation in the first place.

Diez’s approach to translation was informed by his idea about cultural difference. In the introduction to his translations (see Chapter 3), Diez argued that other cultures cannot be fully known, since all knowledge depends on perspective. Diez applied his Pyrrhonian skepticism about knowledge being impossible to argue that all observations of other cultures are dependent on perspective, and therefore, partial. Diez’s Buch des Kabus begins with the following critique of the scholars of his era:

Everyone can only visualize the world and humans as he sees them, and everyone sees them only according to the relationship of the place where he stands, according to the business that he conducts, and the proportion of the perception and experience he has accumulated. Many people freely mislead, through their own vanity, by writing and speaking about everything that they have neither seen or experienced. However, since human truth is only based on the perception of experience and of that which is real, these can only be fruits of experience and facts. Therefore, when well-educated men make known experiences and observations that they have collected about the world and humans, they themselves have always only found a small domain that they were placed by fate…all of them only followed in their own way the more or less crossed way of their one-dimensional profession, where they had to take things as they appeared without being able to experience first-hand that which was outside of their path.406

Since the truth cannot be known, people who make claims about other cultures are “misleading” and should limit themselves to only describing the facts and their experiences, not trying to

406 “Jeder kann sich Welt und Menschen nur vorstellen, wie er sie sieht, und jeder sieht sie nur nach Verhältniss des Orts, wo er gestanden, nach Art der Geschäfte, welche er getrieben, und nach Maasse der Erkenntniss und Erfahrung, welche er sich erworben. Es lassen sich freylich viele durch Eigenliebe verleiten, über alles zu sprechen und zu schreiben, was sie nicht gesehn, noch erfahren haben. Aber da menschliche Wahrheit nur auf Wahrnehmung des Geschehenen und dessen, was würklich ist, beruht: so kann sie nur die Frucht der Erfahrung und Thatsachen seyn. Wenn also wohl unterrichtete Männer Erfahrungen und Betrachtungen kund machen, welche sie über Welt und Menschen gesammelt haben: so haben sie selbige nur immer im engen Bezirke gefunden, worin sie vom Schicksale gestellt worden...nur den mehr oder weniger durchkreutzten Weg ihres einseitigen Berufs zu verfolgen gehabt, wo sie die Dinge nehmen mussten, wie sie ihnen erschienen, ohne dass sie aus eigener Hand das Uebrige erfahren konnten, was ausser ihrer Strasse gelegen waren.” Diez, Buch des Kabus oder Lehren des persischen Königs Kjekjawus für seinen Sohn Ghilan Schach, 1.

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extrapolate them into an overarching understanding of a culture, which is impossible. Indeed,

Diez argued, making statements about other cultures lacking Enlightenment is actually a sign of the dire times in which he saw himself as writing. In the introduction to the Königliches Buch,

Diez wrote:

I write this at a time, where the great majority has completely deviated from recognizing and studying the moral decay of man, because out of blindness, they only dream of the natural abilities and perfection of man, and drowning in self-love and vanity, imagine or at least pretend to see that humans of our age and part of the world are at such a high level of insight and virtue, that one is always inclined to doubt the overwhelming evil that is said about him and to deny it or direct it at people, who lack so-called Enlightenment and Culture. I am not surprised by this. People have now given in so much to destruction and sensual pleasures that they can no longer come back to themselves. 407

Following his idea of self-knowledge (see Chapter 3), Diez viewed his age as ultimately one of moral decay rather than, as Enlightenment thinkers argued, progress. Diez argued that this view of progress was simply a delusion due to lack of self-examination, in which philosophers imagined themselves as being at a “high level of insight and virtue,” which was only an expression of their own vanity. The Enlightenment notion of progress was, to Diez, an illusion, and Enlightenment thinkers were, instead of reflecting on their shortcomings through self- examination, examining other cultures and seeing their own faults, which they attributed to other cultures lacking Enlightenment or culture. Critiquing other cultures as un-Enlightened, for Diez,

407 “Ich schreibe dies zu einer Zeit, wo der grosse Haufe gänzlich davon abgekommen ist, das moralische Verderben des Menschen zu erkennen und zu Untersuchen, weil man aus Verblendung nur von grossen Anlagen und Vervollkommlichkeiten des Menschen träumt und, in Eigenliebe und Eitelkeit ersoffen, sich einbildet oder wenigstens sich so stellt, die Menschen unsers Zeitalters und Welttheils auf so hohen Stufen der Einsicht und Tugend zu sehen, dass man immer geneigt ist, das überwiegende Böse, was ihnen nachgesagt wird, gegen den Augenschein in Zweifel zu ziehen und abzuläugnen oder auf Völker zu werfen, welche, wie man es nennt, der Aufklärung und Cultur ermangeln. Ich wundere mich auch darüber nicht. Man hat sich jetzt der Zersstreuung und dem sinnlichen Vergnügen so sehr hingegeben, dass man nicht mehr zu sich selbst kommen kann.” Diez, Über inhalt und vortrag, entstehung und schicksale des Königlichen buchs, 18.

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is a way of deflecting onto others the necessary moral self-criticism needed by European

Enlightenment thought.

For Diez, the purpose of translation was to understand other cultures through their own writings, which necessitated accurate translations. Although accurate translations may be difficult for someone from another culture to access due to cultural difference, Diez believed the burden should be on the reader to understand rather than on the translator to adapt the text to fit

European tastes. For Diez, adapting a translation amounted to misrepresenting a culture, which was his accusation against the French orientalists, and it should be avoided. Diez critiqued the

Enlightenment for its idea of superiority over other cultures, and instead wanted to understand other cultures in order to gain knowledge from them and apply it to reinvigorate what he viewed as a morally decaying society (described in Chapter 3).

Hammer Strikes Back

The editor of the Fundgruben des Orients, Joseph von Hammer, leapt to the defense of the French translators. Without Diez’s authorization, he added seven editorial footnotes (“Note der Herausgeber”) to Diez’s translation pointing out its flaws.408 Hammer’s critique rested on the method Diez used to transliterate Ottoman words into German. Diez left some of the Turkish words (usually related to religious concepts) in Ottoman Turkish in his translation, merely transliterating the Ottoman term. For example, the fourth line of Diez’s translation of

Ermahnung an Islambol reads “Die Zeit ist da, wo der Mechdi erscheinen…”409 Instead of

408 Diez, “Ermahnungen an Islambol,” 251, 255, 259, 260, 261. Hammer also added one note to another of Diez’s submissions: Heinrich von Diez, “Was Ist Der Mensch? Aus Dem Türkisch- Arabisch Des Kjemal Pascha Sade,” Fundgruben Des Orients, 1809, 398.

409 Diez, “Ermahnungen an Islambol,” 251.

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translating Mahdi (Redeemer), Diez simply transliterated the Ottoman term into German.

Hammer took issue with these transliterations. For example, Hammer’s editorial footnote reads:

The sender demanded as a condition of all future submissions that his spelling should be precisely maintained, which the editor will comply with after the following preface, that it should also be remembered that is it spoken and written “Mahadi” or “Mehdi,” and in no case “Mechdi,” since che and chy, that is h and ch are two completely different letters in writing and pronunciation.410

Hammer insisted that it be transliterated true to the original Arabic letters. In contrast, Diez wrote the word the way it would be pronounced in Ottoman. That is, Diez used German letters to write how the word would be pronounced without caring about the transliteration of individual letters. Diez most likely took this approach as a result of learning Ottoman in the Ottoman

Empire from Ottomans themselves, which involved mostly learning through speaking. Not having a formal education in Ottoman Turkish, Diez transliterated words the way they would have been spoken in Turkish using the spelling that matched German pronunciation (ch pronounced as h, for example).

Diez apparently complained about these footnotes, and Hammer responded in the conclusion (Schlussrede) of the first volume of Fundgruben des Orients.411 In a discussion about the corrections, which were printed at the end of each journal, Hammer noted the following:

Although they [the editors] explained in the Preface that they would respect the individual opinions and spelling of all of their colleagues, they also reserve the right to

410 “Der Herr Einsender hat als unerläßliche Bedingung künftiger Beiträge verlangt, daß seine Schreibart genau beibehalten were, worinn ihm die Herausgebr nach ihrer in der Vorrede gegebenen Erklärung willfahren, aber zugleicht erinnern müßen, daß man Mahadi oder Mehdi spricht und schreibt, aber keineswegs Mechdi, weil che and chy, d.i. h u. ch so in der Schrift als in der Aussprache zwei ganz verschiedene Buchstaben sind.” Ibid.

411 This correspondence is not available - Diez’s letters are not in Hammer’s letter collection (indexed in Höflechner and Wagner, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Erinnerungen Und Briefe).

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correct obvious errors and mistakes, and if they took a free hand in the notes to the essays by Herr Diez, it was neither their intention to offend or to lose him as a colleague.412

Although the correspondence does not remain, it appears that Diez wrote to Hammer after reading the corrections that Hammer made to his pieces and asked him to retract them and publish a rebuttal (Wiederlegung). Instead, Hammer wrote that he reserved the right to correct what, in his view, were mistakes. In another editorial footnote in the conclusion, Hammer wrote

“The Fundgruben is, as stated, not a polemical journal, and the editors will not waste the space of this journal, which is dedicated to more interesting essays, and the patience of the reader with a detailed reply to Herr Diez’s two-folio-long so-called Rebuttal.”413 Further insult was added to injury, as Katharina Mommsen notes, when Diez’s submissions were also not included in the journal’s table of contents (all of the others were).414

Hammer elaborated on the issue of transliteration in a page-long footnote in the conclusion. He wrote, “The editors do not object to the transliteration as long as it is truly expresses the pronunciation of the people (although it is always better to follow the true writing and pure written forms… If one always writes how he hears, he could have the misfortune of

412 “Wenn sie in der Vorrede erklärten, dass sie die individuelle Meinung und Schriebart eines Jeden ihrer Herren Mitarbeiter beachten, so wollten sie sich dadurch die Freyheit offenbare Fehler, oder Versehen zu verbessern nicht benehmen, und wenn sie diesem Rechte (das sie nach der Meinung ihrer Pariserfreunde eher zu gelinde als zu strenge geübt) in den Noten zu Aufsätzen des Herrn von Diez freyen Lauf gelassen, so meinten sie hiedurch weder ihn zu beleidigen, noch an ihm einen ihrer Mitarbeiter zu verlieren.“ Fundgruben des Orients 1 (1809), 463.

413 “Die Fundgruben sind, wie gesagt, kein polemisches Journal, und die Herausgeber würden daher durch eine ausführliche Antwort auf die, zwei grosse Foliobögen starke, sogenannte Wiederlegung des Herrn von Diez den zu interessanteren Aufsätzen bestimmten Raum dieser Zeitschrift, und die Geduld der Leser mißbrauchen.“ Fundgruben des Orients 1 (1809), 463.

414 Katharina Mommsen, Goethe und Diez: Quellenuntersuchungen zu Gedichten der Divan- Epoche (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 9. Table of Contents listed in Fundgruben des Orients 1 (1809): 467-469.

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hearing incorrectly. That is unfortunately the case with Herr von Diez.”415 Hammer continued

h”) as “ch,” reiterating that Mahdi should be spelled “Mehdi” and“) ه that “no Turk pronounces that is also how Herbelot spelled it.416 Hammer fully rejected Diez’s pronunciation-based system.

Part of the disagreement could also stem from a difference in German pronunciation between Vienna and Berlin; “ch” could have been pronounced differently in various German dialects, which may also explain the discrepancy in transliteration. That is, although Diez transliterated some words into German, he transliterated them into the way he would pronounce them in German, which could differ from how other people such as Hammer would pronounce them in other German dialects. There was also lack of standardized German and spellings during this period, which further contributed to the orthographic possibilities.

Since Hammer refused to publish the Wiederlegung in the Fundgruben des Orients, Diez published it at his own expense through the publishing house of Friedrich Nicolai in 1811.417 In it, he addressed Hammer’s footnotes one by one.418 The rationale for the reprint was included in a note on the first page, which read that it was “printed with so many misprints that distorted it

415 “Wider die Schreibart, in so weit sie getreu die Aussprache des Volks ausdrückt, (wiewohl es immer beßer ist, der wahren Schreib- und reinen Sprachart zu folgen) machen die Herausgeber keine Einwendung... Man schreibe immer wie man gehört, es sey dann man habe das Unglück ganz falsch zu hören. Das ist leider! Mit Hernn von Diez der Fall.“ Fundgruben des Orients 1 (1809), 463.

416 Fundgruben des Orients 1 (1809), 464.

417 Heinrich von Diez, Ermahnung an Islambol: oder, Strafgedicht des türkischen Dichters Uweïssi über die Ausartung der Osmanen (Berlin: Nicolai, 1811).

418 Heinrich von Diez, Wiederlegung der 7 note, welche von den H.H. Herausgebern der Fundgruben des Orients, Stück III zu Uebersetzung des Gedichts von Uweissi [Bd I] s. 249-274 gemacht wurden, nebst Verzeichniß der Druckfehler, wodurch d. Uebersetzung und der Original-Text des Gedichts erstellt worden. Reprinted in Heinrich von Diez, Ermahnung an Islambol (Berlin: Nicolaischen Buchhandlung, 1811), 27-36. Note that Diez’s article in Fundgruben des Orients is titled “Ermahnungen an Islambol,” whereas his separate publication is titled “Ermahnung an Islambol.”

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that the translator was forced to organize a correct edition in the name of his and the [original] poet’s honor.”419 The 40-page book included Diez’s original translation, exactly as it appeared in the Fundgruben des Orients, as well as the “Rebuttal” (Widerlegung). In the Widerlegung,

Diez addressed each one of Hammer’s seven editorial footnotes directly.

Diez often referenced his conversations with Ottomans to support his transliteration system. In the dispute about “Mechdi,” for example, Diez wrote, “It goes without saying that I kept the pronunciation of this word and the others that I heard and learned from learned

Ottomans in many years of acquaintance without having to ask permission of His Highness the

Editor.”420 This was part of Diez’s larger concept of translation, which was based on the way language was used, as he had learned, rather than formal rules of grammar. For example, he wrote:

One should not at all want to make a letter theory to absolute rules of pronunciation, since most letters that are written as words usually look different then they do when they are arranged alone in the alphabet: much like the pronunciation of letters in words is usually different from their sound in the alphabet. One should not focus herein on grammar, which is only for beginners, and instead focus on the way the language is used, which knowledge of is only from practice and not dependent on rules which are subject to a thousand exceptions.421

419 “mit so vielen und so entstellenden Druckfehlern abgedruckt, daß der Uebersetzer zu seiner und des Dichters Ehre sich hat entschliessen müssen, eine correcte Ausgabe zu veranstalten.“ Diez, Ermahnung an Islambol.

420 “Es versteht sich also von selbst, daß ich mich bey diesen und allen Wörtern an die Aussprache halte, welche ich von gelehrten Osmanen im vieljährigen Umgang gehört und gelernt habe, ohne sie bey den H. H. Herausgebern suchen zu dürfen.” Ibid., 28.

421 “Ueberhaupt darf man keine Buchstaben-Theorie zur unbedingten Regel der Aussprache machen wollen; denn wie die meisten Buchstaben, in Verbindung von Wörtern geschrieben, ganz anders auszusehen pflegen, als sie einzeln im Alphabet gestaltet sind: so pflegt auch die Aussprache der Buchstaben in Wörtern oft gar sehr von ihrem Laute im Alphabet abzuweichen. Man muß sich also hierin nicht nach der Grammatik, die nur für Anfänger gemacht ist, sondern nach dem Sprachgebrauche...richten, dessen Kenntniss nur allein von der Uebung und nicht von Schulregeln abhängt welche tausend Ausnahmen unterworfen sind.” Ibid.

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That is, Diez argued his knowledge comes from practice and not rules, which “have a thousand exceptions.” Diez transliterated the words as pronouced in Ottoman and conforming to his

German pronounciation. This is also a direct attack on Hammer, who learned the formal rules of grammar at the Oriental Academy.

Despite the conflict surrounding his first published translation, Diez continued his attacks on translators and included one of Hammer’s respected colleagues in Vienna. For example, in

Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien, Diez took on Thomas Chabert (1766-1841), a former Habsburg envoy who translated a biographical dictionary of Ottoman poets.422 In a discussion of Selim I’s poems, Diez wrote that he could reference Chabert’s work: however, “the translation on p. 70-71 has not only been shortened to the point of mutilation, but it also has nothing in common with the original except for a few chosen words: so I must take it as not written and provide my word- for-word translation here.”423

Hammer and Chabert were incensed by Diez’s attack and took to the pages of two major literary journals of the time, Jenaischen Allgemein Literatur-Zeitung (JALZ) and Wiener

Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung (WALZ), to publish scathing reviews of Diez’s books.424 A review of Diez’s Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in the February 2, 1813 edition of the Wiener

Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung acknowledged that Diez attacked the field of oriental studies. It read, “while he wants to master over learned Orientalists with pedantic stringency, he himself

422 Thomas Chabert, Latifi oder Biographische Nachrichten von vorzüglichen türkischen Dichtern, nebst einer Blumenlese aus ihren Werken (Zürich: Heinrich Gessner, 1800).

423 Heinrich von Friedrich Von Diez, Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien: in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung, vol. 1 (Berlin: Nicolai, 1811), 244.

424 The reviews were published under pseudonyms, but Mommsen recognizes them as belonging to Hammer and Chabert.

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falls victim to amateur mistakes and displays a very small knowledge of Turkish, even less of

Arabic, and a complete ignorance of Persian.”425 This critique of Diez’s language ability goes against what has been written about him by other contemporaries, who say he had a high level of

Turkish, which is also demonstrated by his translations of difficult Ottoman texts into German.

Another review of Diez’s Königliches Buch in the January 1813 edition of JALZ attacked Diez as a pompous outsider who wondered into the field of oriental studies and claimed it for himself.

Chabert and Hammer wrote that Diez:

Recently appeared in several writings related to oriental literature not only with a great effort of assessable scholarship, but also with such an arrogant tone as the master of earlier and later orientalists, as the treasurer of priceless gems of the Orient, the recognition of and acknowledgement of whose worth is reserved for him alone, such that it is not even worth the effort to illuminate his own work with the torch of criticism.426

Diez’s appearance in the field of oriental literature and the way he attacked the previous masters of the field was viewed by Hammer and Chabert as arrogance.

Diez addressed the criticisms raised in the reviews with a point-by-point refutation of every line in them, which ended up as a 600-page attack on Hammer titled Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur (Nonsense and Deceit in Oriental Literature). In it, he addressed the claims in Hammer’s and Chabert’s reviews one by one. Hammer and Chabert raised issues with the way Diez translated specific words, and Diez defended his choices. In this polemic, Diez also highlighted some of the differences between Hammer and himself. He dismissed Hammer’s and Chabert’s alma mater, the Royal Academy of Oriental Languages in

425 “Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung,” February 2, 1813, 148.

426 “Über Inhalt und Vortrag, Entstehung und Schicksale des königliches Buchs, eines Werks von der Regierungskunst,” January 1813, 62.Jenaischen Allgemein Literatur-Zeitung, January 1816, 62.

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Vienna, saying “a distinguished and learned man still hasn’t come out of this school.”427 He also attacked Hammer’s rhyming translation of the Qur’an (described in Chapter 4), writing, “If we want to talk about poor taste, let us remember that the opponent [Hammer] is the same person that brings the German translation of the Qur’an into rhyme and prints it in the Fundgruben…”428

The feud continued as Hammer and Chabert responded to Diez’s polemic. Chabert wrote a review in the November 1816 volume of JALZ, dismissing Diez’s work:

The reviewer doesn’t believe that anyone has the patience to read this rubbish to the end, and could leave it at just flipping through the pages had the author not inserted a six- hundred page attack, through fictitious words and interpretations, laughable paradoxes and everything that is boring pedantry and sophistry and the scurrilous rage of a proud man when his ignorance is exposed - in an attempt to convince the uniformed that the reviews of his works in these pages (January 1813) were full of falsehoods and mistakes.429

Chabert acknowledged that Diez attacked the field of oriental literature, writing in the review:

With a single stroke of the pen, [Diez] already described all Austrian scholars and statesmen who were educated at the Royal Oriental Academy…as people without distinction. Herbelot, Cardonne, Michaelis, Lorsbach, in short: all orientalists are idiots according to him. He even dares to want to convince Baron von Sacy that he is wrong. He puts himself on top in the temple of scholarship, smashing all of the altars around him so that sacrifices will only be to him, calling, like God in the Qur’an: Me and no one else! I know better, you know nothing!”430

The allusion to smashing idols depicts Diez as someone who came into the field and attempted to destroy the work of everyone else, convinced only that he was right. This image might come

427 Heinrich von Diez, Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur: Nebst vielen hundert Proben von der groben Unwissenheit des H. v. Hammer zu Wien in Sprachen und Wissenschaften (Halle and Berlin: Hallischen Waisenhaus, 1815), 23.

428 Diez, Unfug und Betrug, 156.

429 Thomas Chabert, “Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung,” Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, November 1816, 265.

430 Ibid., 286.,

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from the fact that Diez did not have any European teachers or connections to the field. He was trained by Ottomans, so he entered the field of oriental literature upon his return from Istanbul without any connections to the major scholars and institutions of European orientalism. Instead of seeking out connections, Diez criticized the entire field.

Hammer published a 29-page book entitled Fug und Wahrheit in der morgenländischen

Literatur (Correctness and Truth in Oriental Literature) to defend his honor. In it, he sought to refute the attacks against him and continued his defense of his method of transliteration. An attachment at the end of the book asked the Berlin Academy of Sciences to intervene and decide the matter.

The Political Stakes of German Orientalism

An explosive combination of religion, political views, and background was at the heart of the controversy between Diez and Hammer. While their feud may appear on the surface to be about the technical methods of translation, it stood for larger debates within the German- speaking world in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Both men were doing the same thing, that is, using translations of Ottoman texts to support their political vision of the future. However, they were using the translations to support competing ideologies. On the one hand, Diez supported an enlightened monarchy and a reinvigoration of Lutheranism. Hammer, on the other hand, was about a generation younger than Diez and supported the newly-emerging romantic German nationalism. Within their feud, major political disagreements involving German nationalism and the role of religion came to the forefront.

German Nationalism

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One of their points of contention was Hammer’s relationship to France, which Diez highlighted in his attacks against Hammer. In the Schlussrede to the first volume of Fundgruben, where Hammer sought to defend adding the editorial footnotes, Hammer wrote:

When they [the editors] explained in the preface that they wanted to respect the individual opinions and style of every contributor, they also wanted to reserve the right (that, according to their friends in Paris, was exercised too laxly rather than too rigorously) to correct obvious mistakes or oversights, and if they gave too free a hand with the notes to the submissions of Herr von Diez, their intention was not to offend him or lose a contributor.431

According to this passage, Hammer sought to defend his footnotes by saying that his friends in

Paris (most likely de Sacy) had recommended an even stricter treatment of Diez’s piece. This incensed Diez, who retorted in Unfug und Betrug with the following passage:

This proves that he had barely finished writing his seven notes before claiming his Parisian friends (probably students of the Vienna school) as the avengers of the court translator Cardonne against me. For that reason, we also heard him complain in the Jenaer Litteratur-Zeitung that the Frenchmen Herbelot and Galland were dealt with so strictly by me. It was still the time, where he hoped to deal me a deadly blow by denouncing me as an enemy of the French in France. What a German! It’s just a pity that his Parisian friends could not give him a better reply [in the Schlussrede] as the one that covered him with shame.432

431 “Wenn sie in der Vorrede erklärten, daß sie die individuelle Meinung und Schriebart eines Jeden ihrer Herren Mitarbeiter beachten, so wollten sie sich dadurch die Freyheit offenbare Fehler, oder Versehen zu verbeßern nicht benehmen, und wenn sie diesem Rechte (das sie nach der Meinung ihrer Pariserfreunde eher zu gelinde als zu strenge geübt) in den Noten zu den Aufsätzen des Herrn von Diez freyen Lauf gelassen, so meinten sie hiedurch weder ihn zu beleidigen, noch an ihm einen ihrer Mitarbeiter zu verlieren.” Fundgruben des Orients (1), 1809: 463.

432 “Dies beweiset, dass er seine sieben Noten nicht sobald geschrieben, als er sich damit bey seinen pariser Freunden (vermuthlich Zöglingen der wiener Schule) als den Rächer des Hofdollmetschers Cardonne gegen mich geltend gemacht hat. Darum hat man ihn auch in der Jenaer Litteratur-Zeitung darüber klagen hören, dass die Franzosen Herbelot und Galland von mir so hart gemeistert worden. Es war noch die Zeit, wo er hoffte, mir einen tödtlichen Streich zu versetzen, wenn er mich als einen Feind der Franzosen in Frankreich verschreyen könnte. Welch ein Deutscher! Nur Schade für ihn, dass seine pariser Freunde ihm keine bessere Replik haben eingeben können als diejenige, welche ihn mit Schande bedekt hat.”Diez, Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur.

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Diez argued that Hammer went to his friends in France in order to support his attack against

Diez. He questioned Hammer’s loyalty as a German by accusing him of being too close to

France. This paints Hammer as on the side of the French instead of the Germans. Written during the Napoleonic Wars, this was the ultimate insult because French troops occupied much of the German-speaking world. In short, Diez’s rhetorical move to affiliate Hammer with the

French ultimately portrayed him as a traitor.

Diez again referenced Hammer’s closeness to the French regarding de Sacy. Diez wrote how Hammer criticized Diez’s translation of the Königliches Buch by saying that it had already been translated thirty-one times (referred to another, related work, entitled the Fables of Bidpai), but then praised de Sacy for his translation of the Fables. Diez wrote: “Frenchmen do not arouse his jealously. His blood only boils for Germans when he notices that he will be weighed and found wanting.”433 Diez’s impression that Hammer favored Frenchmen such as de Sacy and his

Parisian friends was a further attempt to portray Hammer as disloyal to the German nation.

Diez also may have had anti-Austrian feelings stemming from Prussia’s rivalry with

Austria before the French Revolution. He attacked the Austrian Oriental Academy, saying no one significant came out of it. Hammer understood this as an attack on Austria, and replied in

Fug und Wahrheit, “Hear this Austrians! He turned this into Prussia vs. Austria like the “old hate” under Frederick II.”434 Diez and Hammer both saw their debate as something bigger involving the war with France, German rivalry, and nationalism.

433 “Franzosen liegen nicht im Kreise seines Neides. Nur für Deutsche schmilzt ihm das Fleisch von Leibe, wenn er merkt, dass er auf der Wagschale zu leicht befunden werden wird. Es ist aber daran noch nicht genug.” Ibid., 166.

434 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Fug und Wahrheit in der morgenländischen Literatur: nebst einigen wenigen Proben von der feinen Gelehrsamkeit des H. von Diez (Wien: Anton Strauß, 1816), 5.

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Religion and the Enlightenment

Diez’s and Hammer’s debate was also about the role of religion in society. Specifically,

Hammer did not share Diez’s vision of using Ottoman moral philosophy to reinvigorate the monarchy and religion. In an 1813 review of Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien, Hammer wrote “we can only relinquish all fairness to the Diez’s praiseworthy enthusiasm for morality, religion and thorough scholarship. It’s a shame that in his severe displeasure he often crosses the borders in the opposite [of those things] and while he campaigns against unbelief and the spirit of innovation, he gives a boring sermon for superstition and oriental prejudices.”435 Hammer argued that Diez strayed into the territory of superstition and “oriental prejudices” through his work on moral philosophy. In another review, Hammer attacked Diez’s translations of Ottoman moral philosophy as boring and not even known to Ottomans. He warned readers about Diez’s translations, the Königliches Buch and Buch des Kabus, writing that Diez sought to “build a temple to poor taste or boredom” through the “unfounded overestimation of oriental products by pitching mediocre or only partially relevant works of the Orient.” 436

By describing Diez’s work as an “overestimation” of the manuscripts he translated,

Hammer sought to dismiss Diez’s work and, most likely, political argument by telling readers it

435 “können wir nichts anders als den löblichen Eifer desselben [Diez] für Moral, Religion und gründliche Gelehrsamkeit volle Gerechtigkeit wiederfahren laslassen [sic? loslassen]. Nur Schade, daß er in seinem heftigen Unwillen sehr oft die Gränzen im entgegengesetzten Sinne überspringt, und während er wider Unglauben und Neuerungsgeist zu Felde zieht, dem Aberglauben und den orientalischen Vorurtheilen eine langweilige Standrede hält.”“Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien in Künsten und Wissenschaften, Sitten, Gebräuchen und Alterthümern, Religion und Regierungsverfassung,” February 2, 1813, 148.

436 ““ungegründete Überschätzung orientalischer Producte, und durch Anpreisung mittelmässig oder doch nur stellenweise vortrefflicher Werke des Morgenlandes dem falschen Geschmacke oder der Langweiligkeit, wie Hr. v. D., einen Tempel errichten wollten” “Über Inhalt und Vortrag, Entstehung und Schicksale des königliches Buchs, eines Werks von der Regierungskunst,” January 1813, 63.

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wasn’t even worth reading. As described in Chapter 3, both of these works were important for

Ottoman political philosophy and well known in the Ottoman Empire, which Hammer would have known from his training (he later noted he had read the manuscripts before Diez). The temple that Diez was building to boredom could stand for his conservative political outlook and discussion of moral philosophy. Thus Hammer’s attempt to dismiss these works as irrelevant was most likely a political attack against what Diez was trying to do with the works, namely advocate for a reinvigoration of Protestant Christianity and loyalty to an enlightened monarch. Hammer disagreed with Diez’s political vision, which led him to dismiss the works as boring and irrelevant. Quite the opposite, perhaps Hammer recognized Diez’s political points and wrote the review to discourage readers to look further into Diez’s work.

Diez was outraged by Hammer’s dismissal of his work and attacked Hammer’s religious views in Unfug und Betrug. He wrote, “This man is himself lacking everything he says. Ethics and virtue, insight and experience, that are taught by my Orientals are poor taste to him; brilliance and ingenuity are boredom to him – and he doesn’t want to build a temple to that!

From which lunatic asylum did he get the idea of building a temple to boredom?”437 Diez continued: “in terms of poor taste, let us not forget the opponent is the person who brought the

German translations of the Qur’an into rhyme…”438 This is a clear clash of their competing visions, since Hammer used his rhyming translation of the Qur’an (see Chapter 4) to argue for the unity of the German nation around a strong leader who could unite the nation through the

437 “Des Mannes selbst ist freylich alles würdig, was er sagt. Sittenlehre und Tugend, Einsicht und Erfahrung, die von meinen Morgenländern gelehrt werden, heissen by ihm falscher Geschmack; Scharfsinn und geistreiches Wesen gelten ihm für Langweiligkeit, der er keinen a errichtet wissen will! Aus welchem Tollhause mag es wohl aufgegriffen seyn, der Langweiligkeit einen Tempel errichten!”Diez, Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur, 156.

438 Ibid.

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power of language, as expressed in poetry. This exchange highlights how Diez and Hammer’s competing visions of the future clashed on the battlefield of oriental studies.

Diez argued that Hammer wanted to “mislead the believers in Austria so that they wouldn’t notice that at the heart of it [moral philosophy] stands nothing more than revealed religion, which he understands as superstition and oriental prejudice, which he declared, as described above, as mummified bones and a rotten carcass.”439 Diez concluded this paragraph by saying Hammer “knows so little what Truth is that if he was tested, he would not even know the

Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer.”440 Elsewhere, Diez wrote that Hammer found his work boring because he doesn’t value religion and the Bible was so foreign to Hammer that he did probably not have a copy in his house.441

In his response, Fug und Wahrheit, Hammer painted Diez as a religious zealot who was once an atheist. Hammer attacked Diez by bringing up his past as an “atheist” who translated

Spinoza.442 Hammer claimed that Diez’s conversion caused him to lose all sense of civility. He wrote:

Posterity won’t want to believe that the author, as the title says, could ever be an envoy or prelate – that so much crudeness could be reconciled with diplomatic forms or so much malice with spiritual rank. [John] Dryden says about a crude fanatic: I will not say the zeal of God’s house has eaten him up, but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. With Herr von Diez, however, good morals and politeness have been completely devoured from philological conceit and fanatical bigotry…443

439 Ibid., 336.

440 Ibid.

441 Ibid., 412.

442 Hammer-Purgstall, Fug und Wahrheit in der morgenländischen Literatur, 9.

443 Ibid.

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Hammer dismissed Diez’s critiques of his religious views by saying that Diez himself was a religious zealot who had once been an atheist.

Diez’s attack on Hammer was a continuation of his attack on the Enlightenment. To

Diez, Hammer represented everything that was wrong with the current state of affairs in the

German-speaking world: French invasion and Enlightenment irreligiousity. Diez’s war against

Hammer was nothing more than his war against the Enlightenment, which he expressed in his translation of Ottoman advice manuals and then in his critique of Hammer. This is summed up in the very last paragraph of Unfug und Betrug, when Diez, on the 576th page of his invective against Hammer, wrote: “See, dear reader, these are the times of humanitarianism and liberalism that one is supposed to praise in order not to get the reputation of fighting the new philosophical opinions as the Viennese translator calls them, who also studied philosophy and all the rest up to his neck, in order to still not be able to distinguish between culture and eloquence.”444

Conclusion

Diez’s translations of Ottoman moral philosophy was an attempt to introduce his vision of a society based on revelation and enlightened monarchy into German political discourse in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and Prussian reforms. He believed he had to import this from the

Ottoman Empire, which still had a monarchy that continued to draw upon religious law as the basis for rule. Diez saw this as a model for the Prussian state and sought to advocate his vision through his translations. He derided previous translators, attached to the French court, for inaccurately translating Ottoman works. Accuracy was paramount to Diez because it was only

444 “Seht, liebe Leser, das sind die Zeiten der Humanität und Liberalität, welche man loben und preisen soll, um nicht in den Ruf zu kommen, neue philosophische Meynungen zu bekämpfen, wie der wiener Hofdollmetscher es nennt, der auch die Philosophie wie alles übrige bis an den Hals studirt hat, um Cultur und Wohlredenheit noch nicht von einander unterscheiden zu können.” Diez, Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur, 576.

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so that the true Ottoman ideas could come through to be adopted. Diez’s vision was unpopular, and Hammer did not support it. He sought to defend the French orientalists, who were leading the field in oriental literature, and he had connections to French orientalist de Sacy, whose teacher was Cardonne (the target of Diez’s original attack). Through reviews in the Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung and the Wiener Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, Hammer sought to dismiss Diez’s work as boring and not worth reading, in an effort to dissuade readers from engaging with Diez’s political outlook. This angered Diez, who thought he was defending himself when he wrote a 600-page refutation of all of Hammer’s points against him that also directly attacked Hammer personally. The battle over modern orientalism, which was in its infancy during this period, stood for a greater war between competing political visions of the future.

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Chapter 6: Sufism and Orientalism in Weimar

When Coalition forces battled Napoleon’s troops in Leipzig in October 1813, the great poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was ready to flee his house at a moment’s notice. As chaos swirled around him, Goethe sought refuge in the imagined East. He immersed himself in the study of oriental literature and began to write a collection of poems in classical

Persian style called the West-East Divan.445 Goethe described his studies as a form of emigration, shown in the above poem, entitled Hegira. Comparing himself to the Prophet Muhammad, who fled persecution in Mecca for Medina in 622 AD (known as the Hegira), Goethe viewed Oriental studies as an escape from the political chaos of the time. He believed he was fleeing to a land of the Biblical patriarchs (“patriarchal air”) and Khidr, the patron saint of Sufis. In 1815, Goethe wrote to his colleague at the Weimar Library: “Such new studies that one throws oneself into are clearly seen as a type of Hegira, where one flees to where one awaits something heavenly…”446

Goethe’s flight into Sufi studies mirrored how other figures such as Diez and Hammer looked to

Sufism to support visions of the future during the political chaos of the Napoleonic Wars.

Far from being a purely imaginative journey, Goethe’s “hijra” was the result of a long engagement with esoterism that piqued his interest in Sufism, bringing him into contact with

German-speaking diplomats such as Heinrich von Diez and Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. This chapter describes the connections between Diez and Hammer’s service in Istanbul, their translations, and German literary production. Drawing upon Goethe’s letter collection, it shows

445 Oriental literature in this context means Persian, Turkish and Arabic literature.

446 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethes’ Werke, (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1887–1919). Hereafter noted as “WA” (Weimarer Ausgabe) Part IV, Vol. 25, 154.

how the Weimar court, including Goethe, used Sufism to support their vision of reformed absolutist order. Goethe was not the only one to take such a journey; poets such as Heinrich

Heine (1797-1856) and Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) also later produced literature with oriental themes. However, Goethe’s engagement with oriental literature in this fashion is the first and most significant.447 Therefore, this chapter focuses on Goethe and the circle around him in the

Weimar court.

Sufism and Esoterism at the Weimar Court

The Weimar court, centered around the Duke Karl August (1757-1828), was one of the most prominent Illuminati centers in the German-speaking world in the late eighteenth century.

Both Goethe and Carl August were high-ranking members in Strict Observance freemasonry, a style of freemasonry in the eighteenth-century German-speaking world that claimed lineage from the Knights Templar, being inducted in the lodge “Anna Amalia” in Weimar on February 13,

1780 and February 5, 1782, respectively.448 They were both initiated into the higher orders of the lodge, tied to the Illuminati, in December and February 1782.449 The writer Christoph

Wieland (1733-1813), who had been invited to the court as the Duke’s tutor after the Duke’s mother (Anna Amalia, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach) read his novel based on an “oriental”

447 The literary scholar and Goethe expert Katharina Mommsen has examined this interest in depth. Over the course of her career, Mommsen published five books relating to Goethe’s interest in the East: Goethe und 1001 Nacht (1960), Goethe und die Moallakat (1960), Goethe und Diez (1961) Goethe und der Islam (1964), and Goethe und die arabische Welt (1988), many of which have recently been reprinted.

448 W. Daniel Wilson, Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde: Ein unbekanntes Kapitel der klassisch- romantischen Geschichte Weimars (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991), 57, 59. For an overview of Goethe’s relationship to freemasonry, see Peter Volk, “Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749- 1832),” ed. Helmut Reinalter, Freimauerische Persönlichkeiten in Europa (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2014). See also Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism, 86.

449 Wilson, Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde, 61.

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story about ideal governance (Der goldene Spiegel oder die Könige van Scheschian, 1772), was also a member of the lodge, and possibly initiated into the higher Illuminati grades.450 The importance of the Weimar court for the Illuminati was highlighted when it was asked to mediate a dispute between two of its leaders, Adam Weishaupt and Adolf Knigge, in 1784.451

Furthermore, when Weishaupt was exiled from Bavaria in 1787, he migrated to the nearby court of Gotha, and the Weimar court briefly considered employing him.452 Goethe and the Weimar circle became less active during the era of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars as internal disputes amongst competing factions of freemasonry emerged. Interest in the lodge renewed, however, in 1808 and many of Goethe’s works referencing freemasonry are from after this period.453

Goethe also became interested in Sufism during this period, and he used his position as a co-supervisor of the court library (together with Christian Voigt,1743-1819), to acquire Islamic manuscripts. Housed in the “Green Castle,” the library was in transition from a courtly collection of books to a “Bibliotheksmuseum” that combined a collection of books with other collections, such as a coin collection, art collection, and the archive of the royal dynasty.454

Although only 6% of the population in Weimar used it, the library had about 475 borrowers

450 See Volk, “Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832).”

451 See Wilson, Geheimräte gegen Geheimbünde, 86.

452 Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 845.

453 Volk, “Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832),” 64.

454Ulrike Steierwald, “Die Bibliothek als Teil der Erinnerungskultur,” in Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek – Kulturgeschichte einer Sammlung, ed. Michael Knoche (Weimar: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, 1999), 94.

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around 1809 and about a third of them belonged to the court.455 Goethe viewed this as the beginning of a larger collection, writing to his colleague Voigt, “Since I have been led, coincidently, to the East, it is nice to see the founding of a small Oriental library here…we won’t compete with Tippo Saib’s treasures or with Mr. Rich, the Resident in Bagdad.”456 Goethe used his position in the library to build a collection of oriental manuscripts and was aware of similar libraries.

In March 1814, a Leipzig art dealer named Johann Stimmel sent a chest of drawings and manuscripts to the Weimar Library for evaluation.457 Stimmel was attempting to clear his inventory before going bankrupt as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. 458 The Weimar Library acquired all of the eight “Arabic” manuscripts in the chest for a sum of 150 Saxon Reichstalers, which was barely more than the 100 Reichstalers it cost to have the chest transported from

Leipzig to Weimar.459 Without being able to read the manuscripts himself, Goethe authorized the purchase, had a cabinet built for them and sent them to Georg Wilhelm Lorsbach (1752-1816),

Professor of Oriental Languages at the nearby University of Jena, for identification. Lorsbach promptly replied with the titles of the manuscripts and their authors: the Qur’an, the Rumi’s

Mesnevi, Poems of Asafi (Asafi-yi Harawi), Ibrahim Ben Halil-Allah (Amir Sahi), Subhat al-

455 Ulrike Steierwald, “Die Herzogliche Bibliothek 1758-1832,” in Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek – Kulturgeschichte einer Sammlung, ed. Michael Knoche (Weimar: Stiftung Weimarer Klassik, 1999), 74.

456“ WA Part IV, Vol. 25, 141

457 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) IV, Vol. 24, 158.

458 Ibid., 187.

459 WA Part IV, Vol. 25, 141; Ibid., 155. The manuscripts were described as “Arabic manuscripts” (arabische Handschriften), although they also included Ottoman and Persian manuscripts.

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abrar (Jami), a collection of Persian poetry, Mantik al-Tayr, (Attar), and Pandnama (Attar, included a Turkish translation). Lorsbach also provided translations of several of the works from

Fundgruben des Orients. Many of these works have significance for Sufism.

The Mesnevi manuscript was richly illuminated, making it perhaps the most attractive addition to the library. Shortly after the acquisition of the manuscripts in 1815, Goethe wrote to his patron Herzog Carl August:

Since you surely meet Orientalists in society from time to time, perhaps it is helpful to note that we recently acquired an unrivaled example of an illuminated Persian manuscript. It is the Mesnevi of Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, a poem that the Sufis consider the most relevant book after the Qur’an. This example was written in Shiraz around the time that it was the residence of the Persian Emperor, which had to be approximately 1500.

Goethe was aware that the Mesnevi was the second most venerated book by Sufis (here he probably meant Mevlevis) after the Qur’an, showing that he was aware of its place in Sufism.

By this time, Goethe had also cultivated an interest in Arabic. He had been familiar with

Galland’s translation of the Thousand and One Nights since his childhood and began to read

Arabic poetry and the Qur’an as a student after meeting Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803).460

Before deciding to study law, at the behest of his father, he had hoped to study Semitic languages and also began to study the language when he was working on Mahomet. Goethe relied on professors at the nearby University of Jena to learn Arabic. Goethe practiced reading and writing

Arabic with the one-time chair of Protestant theology at the nearby University of Jena, Heinrich

Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, (1761-1851) who subsequently moved to Heidelberg where Goethe visited him frequently in 1814-5.461 After the death of Paulus’s successor at Jena, Georg

460 Mommsen, Goethe and the Poets of Arabia, 1.

461 Ibid., 12.

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Wilhelm Lorsbach (1752-1816), Goethe attempted to find a replacement for him.462 De Sacy was apparently consulted and recommended his student Johann Gottfried Kosegarten (1792-1860), the son of the poet Gotthard Ludwig Theobul Kosegarten (1758-1818).463

During these years, Goethe began to practice Arabic calligraphy. He was especially interested in learning to write Arabic for esoteric applications: writing to his friend Christian

Heinrich Schlosser, Goethe explained his study of Arabic calligraphy, “I am still learning Arabic, at least enough to practice the writing so that I can copy the amulets, talismans, abraxas and seals in the original language. Perhaps in no other language is spirit, word and scripture embodied so primevally.”464 By learning Arabic calligraphy, Goethe hoped to copy esoteric formulas for magical purposes. The interest in Arabic inscriptions was apparently shared by other members of court society, and Hammer wrote an article in Fundgruben des Orients describing the various

Arabic-language amulets owned by nobles in European society.465 Goethe, in turn, also wrote a poem about these talismans entitled “Talisman.”466

Goethe also shared Hammer’s interest in the Qur’an as an example of how language can unify a nation. He was familiar with it through his friendship with Herder as early as 1770 or

462 Ibid.

463 Ibid., 13.

464 “Wenig fehlt, daß ich noch arabisch lerne, wenigstens soviel will ich mich in den Schreibezügen üben, daß ich die Amulette, Talismane, Abraxas und Siegel in der Urschrift nachbilden kann. In keiner Sprache ist vielleicht Geist, Wort und Schrift so uranfänglich zusammengekörpert.” WA Part IV, Vol. 25, 165.

465 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, “Über die Talismane der Moslimen,” Fundgruben des Orients, vol. 4 (1814), 155.

466 Katharina Mommsen, Goethe und der Islam (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 2001), 184.

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1771.467 Goethe wrote to Adolph Blumenthal, “God says in the Qur’an: We haven’t sent any people a Prophet in a language other than its own! And therefore the Germans were first a people through Luther.”468 For Goethe, the essential role of a prophet is to unite people through language. Luther, for Goethe, can be viewed as a prophet because he unified Germans through a translation of the Bible into German. Thus for Goethe, both Luther and Muhammad were leaders who united their respective nations through language. Goethe echoes this sentiment in a further note in the Divan in a comment about the Qur’an:” This book will remain highly effective for all times, as it was composed practically and for the needs of a nation...”469 Goethe also read excerpts from Hammer’s translation of the Qur’an at a gathering for the grand duchess of

Weimar, Luise von Hessen-Darmstadt (the wife of Goethe’s patron, Duke Karl August), and her associates on February 28, 1815. Charlotte von Schiller described the verses as “beautiful Arabic literature” (“wunderschöne arabische Dichtungen”).470

Goethe apparently carried over key concepts from his studies of Islam into his personal life. From his readings of the Qur’an, Goethe was most interested in the concept of predestination (Qadar), and the idea of submission to divine will (Islam). For example, after the death of his wife Christiane in 1816, he wrote the artist Johann Meyer: “and so we must abide in

Islam (that means: absolute devotion to God’s will)...”471 In another letter, to the philologist Karl

Zelter, after a discussion of Goethe’s daughter-in-law’s difficult pregnancy, Goethe concludes: “I

467 Ibid., 20.

468 Goethe, 1905, 160.

469 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-östlicher Divan (Stuttgart: J.G Cotta, 1820), 262.

470 Qtd. in Mommsen, 223.

471 “Und so müssen wir denn wieder im Islam, (das heißt: in unbedingter Hingebung in den Willen Gottes) verharren…”WA Part IV, Vol. 27, 123.

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cannot say anything else, except that I am also trying to keep myself in Islam.”472 As Goethe dealt with difficult periods in his life, he apparently turned to key concepts from his studies of

Islam to help him cope. Goethe understood Islam not as a religion but as a state of being (that of submission to divine will) and attempted to achieve it.

From Buch des Kabus to West-östlicher Divan

Goethe checked the Buch des Kabus, along with Denkwürdigkeiten von Asien, out of the

Weimar Library on January 8, 1815 and began reading it three days later.473 He read it throughout the first half of 1815 before returning it on May 22, 1815. 474 A week later, Goethe bought six copies of the Buch des Kabus from a Weimar bookseller and gave some of them to friends.475 He described his experience reading the Buch des Kabus: “At the time when I was carefully researching Oriental poetry, the Buch of Kabus came into my hands. It seemed so important that I devoted much time to it and invited many friends to have a look at it.”476 The

Buch des Kabus, along with Diez’s other works, had a significant influence on the Divan.

Written between 1814 and 1827, the West-östlicher Divan is a collection of over two hundred poems inspired by classical Persian poetry. The poems are divided into twelve “books” bearing names from themes and figures in Persian poetry such as “Hafis Nameh” (Book of

Hafiz), “Ushk Nameh” (Book of Love) and “Suleika Nameh” (Book of Zuleika). An attachment, the Noten und Abhandlungen, explains historical and other background information for the

472 “Weiter kann ich nichts sagen, als daß ich auch hier mich im Islam zu halten suche.” WA Part IV, Vol. 33, 240.

473 Mommsen, Goethe und Diez, 78.

474 Ibid.

475 Ibid., 83.

476 Goethe, West-East Divan, 273.

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poems, including an extensive discussion of the historical context of the Kabusname and Diez’s translation. Goethe’s Divan draws from the symbolism of classical Persian poetry, such as wine and the cupbearer, and its catalog of Sufi metaphors for divine love. In doing so, Goethe’s Divan in a way continues the tradition of Persian (and Ottoman) poetry by using a shared set of symbols and naming the book a “divan,” which was common for similar collections of poems.

Goethe began corresponding with Diez four months after reading the Buch des Kabus. A mutual acquaintance, philologist Ferdinand Hand (1786-1851), wrote Diez that Goethe was reading Diez’s work.477 In response, Diez sent two copies of his recently published translation,

Vom Tulpen- und Narcissen-Bau in der Türkey, one for Hand and one for Goethe. Hand delivered the booklet to Goethe on April 21, 1815.478 That same day, Goethe composed the following poem praising Diez and the Buch des Kabus:479

Wie man mit Vorsicht auf der Erde wandelt, Es sey bergauf, es sey hinab vom Thron, Und wie man Menschen, wie man Pferde handelt Das alles lehrt der König seinen Sohn. Wir wissens’ nun, durch dich der uns beschenkte; Jetzt fügest du der Tulpe Flor daran, Und wenn mich nicht der goldne Rahm beschränkte, Wo endete was du für uns gethan!480

The poem expressed Goethe’s gratitude for Diez’s translations. It highlighted the Buch des Kabus as a piece of advice literature encompassing all aspects of life (“Wie man Menschen, wie man Pferde handelt/ Das alles lehrt der König seinen Sohn”). The “king” who teaches his

“son,” refers to Kaykāvus, the original author of the Kabusname, and his son, Gilanshah. Goethe

477 Mommsen, Goethe und Diez, 79.

478 Ibid.

479 Ibid., 80.

480 Ibid., 291.

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praised Diez for making the text accesible by translating it into German (“Wir wissens’ nun, durch dich der uns beschenkte”). He also thanked Diez for the book, Vom Tulpen- und

Narcissen-Bau in der Türkey (“Jetzt fügest du der Tulpe Flor daran”). Goethe had this poem framed in a gold frame and sent it to Diez one month later, which he referred to as the “goldne

Rahm” in the poem.481 While Hand originally put the two men in touch, Goethe used this poem to praise Diez and initiate a direct correspondence.

Read on another level, the poem also implicitly acknowledges the contribution of the

Buch des Kabus as a work of moral philosophy. “Wie man mit Vorsicht auf der Erde wandelt/ Es sey bergauf, es sey hinab vom Thron” refers to the “inward track,” or the soul’s journey towards the Divine (represented by the throne), a concept from Sufism frequently found in Ottoman and

Persian poetry, which requires moral cultivation for advancement.482 Mirrors for princes such as the Kabusname can be considered works of adab, or etiquette, which offer formulas for cultivating virtue through recommended actions.483 Thus the cultivation of virtue was a mechanism for spiritual advancement, which these thinkers were searching for. Adab literature provided them with concrete advice for the cultivation of virtue, which is how they were used in

Sufi orders. For Goethe, the main question was if these recommendations were specific to eleventh-century Ziyarid culture or could be applied to his own era. He wrote in a letter to Diez,

“it is only a question of the situations interesting us merely historically and analogously or if it

481 Ibid., 80.

482 Şeyh Gâlip, Beauty and Love, trans. Victoria Rowe Holbrook (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2005), xiii.

483 L. Marlow, “Surveying Recent Literature on the Arabic and Persian Mirrors for Princes Genre,” History Compass 7, no. 2 (2009): 523–38.

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really continues to our time.”484 Goethe sought to understand if the advice in the Buch des Kabus could be applied in early nineteenth-century Europe or if it was simply a historical relic. Like

Diez, Goethe’s interest in the Kabusname rested on its potential usage as an advice manual for the cultivation of morality in the early nineteenth-century German-speaking world.

Goethe’s poem to Diez began a correspondence of ten letters between the two authors.

Goethe often posed questions to Diez about Ottoman literature (which included Persian, Turkish, and Arabic works), which Diez promptly answered. In the Noten und Abhandlungen, Goethe described his correspondence with Diez: “Because I was working in a planned, methodical way,

I needed accessible information that would have required time and energy to locate in books. So when in doubt I consulted him and always got an adequate, practical reply to any question.”485

Goethe used Diez as an informant in his studies of Ottoman literature. In his first letter to Diez, written May 20, 1815, Goethe asked Diez if he could send his questions to him, writing, “I ask for permission to call upon your protection and grace in a kingdom which I visit only as a stranger, and where you rule absolutely.”486 Goethe’s metaphor of the stranger in a kingdom ruled by Diez reflects his earlier imagery of absolutist rule.

Diez tried to explain his critique of oriental studies in his letters to Goethe. In his first letter to Goethe, dated July 12, 1815, he launched into his problems with the field in the opening lines. He wrote, “Your Honor astounded and ashamed me as much as delighted and encouraged me through your engaging letter from May 20. That it happened that one who I didn’t expect - why should I not confess it! - that the so disreputable and so misunderstood Easterners

484 Goethes Werke, vol. Part IV, Vol. 25 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1901), 339– 340.

485 Goethe, West-East Divan, 274.

486 Goethes Werke, Part IV, Vol. 25:339–340.

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(Morgenländer) could be admitted access to you next to the muses that you have gathered around yourself, but it should also be approved that you would let it fall back on me.”487 Diez’s letter recognized Goethe’s contribution to literature and, for this reason, that Diez cannot remain indifferent. Diez wanted to make Goethe aware of the stakes of the debate about oriental studies, as Diez saw it. Therefore, Diez launched into a long discussion about how the Orient is misunderstood only a couple lines into his very first letter to Goethe. Diez barely conveyed the formulaic greetings to Goethe before discussing his views. The feud was clearly on Diez’s mind, even when writing to the most eminent author of his time. This shows Diez’s passion for critiquing the field of oriental studies, which Diez brought up in almost all of his published translations as well. In the July 1815 letter to Goethe, Diez wrote:

I myself have long been of the opinion that Easterners and Westerners, whatever differences they have among themselves, should unite, because it is only for that reason that knowledge traveled all lands of the earth and will persist in traveling until the end of the world, in order to imprint a certain individual character upon the spirit of the inhabitants of every lineage and to reciprocally take from them, as the physical nature has its own form in every stretch of the earth, and the faces of people have particular forms and traits, and often different colors. In short, it is designed in the world for diversity of spirit, so that it wants to look for painting and form in arts and sciences in all climates, which would mean the same as demanding that all peoples of the earth should have the same color and same physiognomy. The human mind, as I was first told by an elderly Ottoman, who had experienced a lot and contemplated about it even more, strives for the same goals everywhere, just the paths to reach it differs according to peoples. So it only depends on representing the Easterners as they are without concerning oneself with idiots who want to translate them as if they thought and wrote in German, since as easy as it makes it for those so-called translators to think and write for themselves, it means misrepresenting and betraying the Easterners, because they did not think nor write in German. 488

487 That is to say Diez awakened an interest in Goethe through the Book of Kabus and that interest “came back” to Diez by Goethe asking him about the book.

488 This is probably refers to Hammer, who tried to capture the poetic qualities of the original in German translations. Carl Sigfried, “Briefwechsel Zwischen Goethe und v. Diez,” Goethe Jahrbuch, ed. Ludwig Geiger, vol. 11 (Frankfurt: Rütten / Loening, 1890), 26.

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For Diez, the translations represent the heritage of human knowledge. Knowledge is universal and diverse at the same time. Diez understood knowledge as its own force that “travels all of the lands of the earth” and expresses itself in different ways among different peoples. However, the underlying force of knowledge remains the same. Translating knowledge from another culture, for Diez, is a way to find knowledge from elsewhere in the world. However, for Diez, the original source of knowledge is the same; that is why Diez can draw from ancient Greek,

Renaissance humanist, and Ottoman works. These all represent different expressions of the same universal knowledge that is at the core of every culture. For this reason, Diez was angered by what he viewed as misrepresentation of knowledge by trying to fit it from one culture to another.

He therefore insisted that translations be as accurate as possible in order to correctly represent knowledge.

In a letter to Diez, Goethe agreed with Diez’s criticism of other orientalists. Goethe wrote, “here we see an example of how the masters of the guild, instead of supporting something good, attempt to hinder and block its merits. But in our time, they will not succeed and finally the real and brave will claim its place.”489 Goethe commended Diez on his work, writing

“accuracy and certainty are the best attributes of your work.”490 In a time where Diez was in a feud with Hammer about accuracy, Goethe sought to reassure Diez.

Goethe drew upon Diez’s Buch des Kabus for eighteen poems in the Divan.491 Many of these are in the Divan’s “Buch der Sprüche,” and were written by Goethe in the spring of 1815

489 WA Part IV, Vol. 26, 246.

490 WA Part IV, Vol. 26, 246.

491 See Mommsen, Goethe und Diez, 342–6.

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when he was engaged with the Buch des Kabus.492 For example, Katharina Mommsen shows how the poem “"Betrübt euch nicht ihr guten Seelen!" is related a passage in the Buch des

Kabus.493 The poem in Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan reads:

Betrübt euch nicht ihr guten Seelen! Denn wer nicht fehlt weiß wohl wenn andre fehlen; Allein wer fehlt der ist erst recht daran, Er weiß nun deutlich wie sie wohl gethan.494

This poem draws from the following passage in the Buch des Kabus: 495

Man fragte jemanden: hast du denn gar keine Fehler? Er antwortete ich habe keine! Man fragte weiter: ey! hast du den nie an andern Leuten Fehler gesehn? und da er sagte, sehr viel! so sprach man zu ihm: also hat es denn keinen Menschen gegeben, der mehr Fehler hätte als du?496

Goethe’s reworking of the Buch des Kabus into poetry for the Divan is one example of the transmission of knowledge from the Ottoman Empire to the German-speaking world. This particular passage relates to recognizing one’s own faults in those of others, an ancient Greek concept also found in Islamic philosophy. Reaching this level of self-reflection is a necessary part of moral development under this system.

Conclusion

Goethe used his correspondence with Diez to further his understanding of oriental literature, which he used to write the West-East Divan (West-östlicher Divan). The Divan was mostly written precisely at the time in which Goethe corresponded with Diez. It is a collection

492 Ibid., 110.

493 Ibid., 111.

494 Ibid.

495 Ibid.

496 Diez, Buch des Kabus oder Lehren des persischen Königs Kjekjawus für seinen Sohn Ghilan Schach, 474.

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of poems inspired by Sufi poetry and Diez and Hammer’s translations.497 The poems contain numerous references to Islam, Sufism and classical Persian poetry. Goethe was apparently interested in Sufism during these years and also attempted to collect manuscripts, practice Arabic poetry, and apply Islamic concepts to his own life as a result of his engagement with these works.

Goethe’s interest in Sufism was the result of Diez’s and Hammer’s translations of Ottoman texts which, through translation, resulted in new literary production by Germany’s national poet.

497 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-Östlicher Divan (Stuttgart: In der Cottaischen Buchhandlung, 1819). Expanded edition published in 1827.

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Chapter 7: Sufism and Evangelical Christianity

An eighteen-year-old boy named August Tholuck (1799-1877) knocked on Diez’s door on the morning of January 12, 1817. He had travelled almost four hundred kilometers northwest from his hometown of Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland) after reading Diez’s work and becoming

“enthusiastic” about Diez’s religious views.498 Before his journey, he spent countless hours wondering if Diez would become his mentor, praying, as he later described, “the Heavenly

Father would give me certainty that Diez could be everything that I needed.” 499 Finally, with certainty in his heart, he knocked on Diez’s door only to be turned away by a servant. Stunned,

Tholuck later described how, at this moment, he was assaulted by a dark voice from within calling “see, there is no God!” and he started to head to a nearby bridge, where “the roaring water demonically called him into its depths to make an end of a now-meaningless existence.”500

Suddenly, the servant’s voice snapped Tholuck out of his thoughts. He asked Tholuck to leave a letter for Diez, who finally met with him, exclaiming “Young man, you are a strange one, a very strange one indeed! But I believe that Divine Providence led you to me.”501 Diez allowed

Tholuck to move in with him that day and become his assistant. Thanks to his training in Berlin, which started with Diez, Tholuck became one of the founding theologians of modern evangelical

Christianity as well as the founder of modern Sufi studies in the West. Drawing from Tholuck’s

498 Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, 1:53.

499 Ibid., 10

500 “das rauschende Wasser zieht ihn dämonisch in die Tiefe, einem Dasein ein Ende zu machen, das doch keinen Wert mehr besißt.” Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, 1:59.

501 Ibid., 1:60.

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published works, this chapter shows the connection between Tholuck’s study of Sufism, under the mentorship of Diez, and the subsequent development of his theology.

Evangelical Theologian, Scholar of Sufism

August Tholuck was born on March 30, 1799 to a goldsmith in Breslau. After several accidents while trying to learn his father’s trade, Tholuck went to the gymnasium and then began to study philology at the University of Breslau. 502 In his early years, he was interested in Sufism and delivered a lecture in praise of Islam.503 After moving to Berlin and living with Diez,

Tholuck came into contact with neo-Pietists, especially Hans Ernst von Kottwitz (1757-1843), and converted to their point of view.504 He studied theology in Berlin and was appointed as a theology professor at the University of Halle in 1826, where he was seen as an evangelical counterweight to the still-dominant rationalist theology, and taught until his death in 1877.505

Tholuck’s dissertation in Latin, SSufismus, sive, Theosophia Persarum pantheistica

(Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of the Persians, 1821), was the “first major study of

Sufism in a European language.”506 Drawing from eleven Persian, seven Arabic, and two Turkish

502 Richard Clogg, “Enlightening ‘A Poor Oppressed, and a Darkened Nation’: Some Early Activities of the BFBS,” in Sowing the Word: The Cultural Impact of the British and Foreign Bible Society 1804-2004, ed. Stephen Batalden, Kathleen Cann, and John Dean (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd, 2004), 247.

503 D.S. Schaff, “Tholuck, Friedrich August,” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1953), 420.

504 Evangelical (“evangelisch”) meant Protestant in German since the Reformation, but Tholuck used the word in the sense it was being used in the English-speaking world at the time to refer to the evangelical movement, which began in England in the 1730’s.

505 See, for example, Ashbel Green, The Christian Advocate, vol. VIII (Philadelphia: A. Finley, 1830), 370.

506 August Tholuck, SSufismus, sive, Theosophia Persarum pantheistica (Berlin: Dümmler, 1821). Khalil and Sheikh, “Sufism in Western Scholarship, a Brief Overview,” 357.

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manuscripts from Diez’s library and the University Library of Berlin (Universitätsbibliothek von

Berlin), Tholuck sought to describe Sufism as a philosophical system. It was the first work of its kind; while Diez and Hammer had written about Sufism, they did not describe it as a system or use the word “Sufism.” He subsequently published excerpts of translations of some of the manuscripts in a separate volume, entitled Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik: nebst einer Einleitung über Mystik überhaupt und Morgenländische insbesondere (Bouquet of

Oriental Mysticism, 1825).507

Around the same time, Tholuck also began to write theological treatises which became important for the development of evangelical Christianity. The first, Die Lehre von der Sünde und dem Versöhner, oder die wahre Weihe des Zweiflers (The Doctrine of Sin and the Redeemer, or The True Consecration of the Skeptic, 1823), is a treatise on sin and redemption that has been described as “the ‘standard tract’ of the ‘German Awakening’ (Erweckungsbewegung).”508 He also authored several Biblical exegeses which were, like Die Lehre von der Sünde und dem

Versöhner, also translated into English (as well as other European languages): on Romans (1825, trans. 1834-6, 1848), John (1827, trans. 1842), Hebrews (1836, trans. 1842), and Psalms (1843, trans. 1858).509 His commentary on Romans was considered “the first exegetical fruit of the new

Evangelical theology.”510 Taken together, his works argue for the importance of Jesus as a

507 English translations of titles are from Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy.

508 Ibid., 134.

509 For a full list of publications, see Schaff, “Tholuck, Friedrich August,” 420; Witte, Das Leben D. Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck’s, 1:473.

510 Schaff, “Tholuck, Friedrich August,” 420.

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redeemer for sin, which is the cornerstone of evangelical belief. His work was also influential in

England and America through the English translations.511

The Fallacies of Mysticism

Tholuck used the introduction to his 1825 work, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, to argue for the superiority of evangelical Christianity over mysticism, especially Sufism.512 He believed that Sufism, however, was a close second to evangelical Christianity, describing it as “the most lively and superior revelation of God in the natural world” and “ highest and greatest after the kingdom of evangelical grace.”513 The issue with all forms of mysticism, for Tholuck, was that it led to narcissism, whereas evangelical

Christianity led to selflessness.

Tholuck argued that the methodology of mysticism ultimately cultivates a deep love of oneself rather than its intended goal of self-abandonment. Since mystics attempt to know God by knowing themselves (as Diez’s work advocated; described in Chapter 3), Tholuck argued, they spend a lot of time thinking about themselves. This contemplation leads to love of the self and the illusion that the self is God. Thus the method of mysticism, according to Tholuck, results in the opposite effect of its goal. Tholuck described the process as follows:

the knowledge of his God originates partially from his own heart, and since he constantly looks at this source without end, a self-love – unknown to himself – develops that becomes his religion – in general, this is the most common effect of mysticism, that a person becomes trapped in himself, while evangelical Christianity makes him free from

511 Ibid.

512 Tholuck acknowledged the vagueness of “mysticism,” writing that it should be conceived as a “positive religion” in order to compare it to a “positive religion.” August Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik: nebst einer Einleitung über Mystik überhaupt und Morgenländische insbesondere (Berlin: Dümmler, 1825), 18.

513 “die lebendigste und erhabenste Offenbarung Gottes aus dem Gebiete der Natur, sie ist das Höchste und Größte nach dem Reiche der evanglischen Gnade” Ibid., 28.

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himself in all regards. The entire religion of the mystics is in his own mind, where his God gives him new revelations every day, there it preaches love, there it preaches hate; his God dies there and is reborn there. 514

The mystic seeks to know God by knowing himself, but oftentimes he falters by seeing only himself and becoming a slave to his own desires. Tholuck argued that self-contemplation leads to a deep love of the self that turns into the mystic’s religion, trapping him in his own mind. He wrote, “like everything within the natural world, it is still defined by self-interest, and however strong its friends [mystics] try to break the its coarse bonds, they cannot free themselves from the chains of self-interest, which only bind humans tighter according to his nature.”515 The inward- facing methodology of mysticism is bound to end up in egoism because of man’s self-interested nature. The deeper the mystic looks within himself, the tighter he is bound by self-interest. Thus the shortcoming of mysticism is that it leads to self-centeredness.

For Tholuck, human nature is dark and can only be illuminated through a connection to

Jesus. Thus the self-examining course of mysticism and knowing the self only leads to darkness.

Tholuck wrote, “the God that the mystics know only as the inner cause of his own existence, as the deepest source of his spirit, is not a friendly one. Mystics who know the Father through

514 “die Kunde seines Gottes vorzugsweise aus seinem eignen Herzen fließt, da er auf diesen Quell ohne Aufhören hinblickt, so ensteht, ihm selbst unvermerkt, eine Selbstliebe, die ihm Religion wird – Ueberhaupt aber und im Ganzen liegt darin die versuchendste Würkung der Mystik, daß der Mensch durch sie in sich selbst gehalten wird, während das evangelische Christenthum ihn in jeder Rücksicht von sich selbst frei macht. Die ganze Religion des Mystikers liegt in seinem eignen Gemüthe, da giebt ihm sein Gott jeden Tag neue Offenbarungen; da wird ihm Liebe, da Haß verkündiget; da stirbt sein Gott, da wird er ihm wieder geboren..” Ibid., 26.

515 “ist die lebendigste und erhabenste Offenbarung Gottes aus dem Gebiete der Natur, sie ist das Höchste und Größte nach dem Reiche der evanglischen Gnade, aber wie alles auf dem Gebiete der Natur trägt sie doch noch die Selbstsucht an sich, und wie kräftig sie auch die gröberen Fesseln derselben bei ihren Freunden zu zerbrechen weiß, so kann sie doch nicht von den seinen Ketten der Selbstsucht befreien, sondern bindet den Menschen desto starker damit, je kräftigerer Natur er ist.” Ibid., 28.

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Christianity can then also love their hidden God as a friendly one.”516 When mystics know themselves through self-examination, what they find is ultimately their own human limitations, whereas evangelical Christians rely on an external force for illumination. The goal of the evangelical Christian is to spread this illumination to form a community, in contrast to the mystic who seeks only his own enlightenment. Tholuck wrote, “what good is all of the apotheoses of feeling and fantasy when the will and disposition are in darkness? What good is the appearance of gods in the perception of the vast physical world when I can’t, through the power of Love, establish a kingdom of God in the hearts of my brothers!”517 Mystics, for Tholuck, are subject to their own delusions and ultimately do not contribute anything to a greater community.

Tholuck’s critique of mysticism as centered in the mind was also an attack on rationalism and speculative philosophy.518 Like Diez, Tholuck criticized rationalism in favor of revelation, writing that for a Christian, “revelation is the highest norm of all truth.”519 This certainty was a source of protection against the dangers of skepticism brought on by speculative philosophy.

Tholuck wrote, “the evangelical Christian does not need to be afraid of speculation [i.e. speculative philosophy]. He does not know and does not want to know more than is transmitted

516 “… jener Gott, den der Mystiker nur kennt als den innisten Grund seines eigenen Daseyns, als den tiefften Urquell seines Geistes, ist kein freundlicher. Mystiker, welche durch des Christenthum den Vater kennen lernten im Sohne, konnten dann freilich auch den in ihnen verborgenen Gott als einen freundlichen lieben.” (24-25)

517 “Was helfen alle Apotheosen des Gefühls und der Phantasie, wenn der Wille und die Gesinnung der Finsterniß angehört. Was helfen die Göttererscheinungen aus der Anschauung der weiten Wesenwelt, wenn ich nicht vermag in kämpfender Liebe ein Reich Gottes in den Herzen meiner Mitbrüder zu gründen!” Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, 23.

518 For a discussion on Tholuck’s attack on speculative philosophy, see Park, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy, 133–148.

519 13: “Der Christ, dem die objective Offenbarung die höchste Norm aller Wahrheit ist..”

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to him as the revelation of God; he strips away all conclusions that exceed it.”520 The evangelical Christian puts his or her full faith only in revelation, not having any need for philosophy. Tholuck continued, “the Christian knows that there cannot be a philosophy whose consistency can shake his faith until the End of Days. He doesn’t look for consistency; he instead searches for its consequence – the consequence of his faith – which is perception.”521

Tholuck believed philosophy was speculation and could not be proven, while belief in revelation could lead to perception of the truth.

Although they both shared belief in the superiority of revelation over reason, Diez’s and

Tholuck’s approaches to the Bible differed on several key points. Diez (as described in Chapter

3) was a Pyrrhonian skeptic who did not believe the truth could be rationally known, which led him to support revelation. For Diez, this entailed a long process of moral purification and inward contemplation that is found in Sufi orders. This required an emphasis on religious law, and

Diez’s viewed the Bible ultimately as a source of law, found especially in the Ten

Commandments and Old Testament. Diez rarely mentioned Jesus in his works. In contrast,

Tholuck emphasized the New Testament, especially the Gospels, which describe Jesus’s life, and the power of a Jesus as a redeemer. Despite this difference, Diez and Tholuck both used translations of Sufi texts to express their support for revelation over reason.

520 “Der evangelische Christ braucht die Speculation nicht zu fürchten. Er weiß nicht mehr und will nicht mehr wissen als die Offenbahrung Gottes ihm mittheilt; alle Folgerungen, welche über sie hinausgehen, schneidet er ab.” Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, 24.

521 “Der Christ weiß, daß es keine Philosophie bis zum Ende der Tage geben kann, deren tiefe Folgerichtigkeit ihm seinen Glauben wankend mache. Er sucht nicht nach Folgerichtigkeit; er erwartet vielmehr die Folge, nämlich die Folge seines Glaubens, die das Schauen ist.” Ibid.

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By relying on the figure of Jesus, Tholuck argued, evangelical Christianity avoids the selfishness of mysticism due to its external focus. Tholuck wrote:

It is completely different for the evangelical Christian. His revelation, grace, beatitude are set outside of himself. They certainly come to him, but only because he lives for them completely, as they are external to him. However much the mystic speaks of self- abandonment, relinquishing of the self, annihilation in God, he only loves himself in his God. Only the evangelical Christian can, in truth, be a child, and reach, through that, a true self-forgetting love of God.522

Evangelical Christianity offers a solution, argued Tholuck, because the methodology is external to the practitioner. In contrast to the mystic, evangelical Christians seek to forget everything and be like a child through a conversion and rebirth of the spirit through Jesus. They thus reach a state of self-abandonment through an external impulse provided by the Son rather than the mystic’s path of self-knowledge. Tholuck wrote, “mysticism can create friends or even brothers of God, but not children of God.”523 The ability to become a child through conversion, for

Tholuck, was central to accessing the grace of the Father.

Despite the shortcomings of mysticism, Tholuck believed that evangelical Christianity could harness the power of “oriental mysticism” (by which he meant tasawwuf, or Sufism) for its own purposes. On the first page of the Blüthensammlung, Tholuck described his reason for translating Sufi poetry:

I hope these passages can bear fruit by awakening weak spirits and leading to something higher than petty morality and custom; to make those who are simply spinning their wheels on the earth of empty metaphysics hungry for nourishment; to bewilder those who

522 “Ganz anders beim evangelischen Christen. Seine Offenbarung, seine Gnade, seine Seligkeit sind außer ihn gestellt. In ihn kommen sie allerdings, aber nur dadurch, daß er sich ganz so in sie hineinlebt, wie sie außer ihn gestellt sind. Wie viel nun auch gerade der Mystiker von Selbstentsagung, Selbstentäußerung, Aufgehn in Gott spricht, so liebt er…in seinem Gotte doch nur sich selbst. Nur der evanglische Christ kann in Wahrheit ein Kind werden, und eben dadurch zu einer wahrhaft ihr eignes Selbst vergessenden Liebe Gottes gelangen.” (25-6)

523 “Die Mysik kann Freunde, ja sie kann Brüder Gottes bilden, aber keine Kinder Gottes.” Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, 28.

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have all possible approaches to Christianity without possessing its core through the awareness that they are on the same level as Muslims who turn their wisdom to error; and finally to shame those who refuse to believe in the grace of God outside of the realm of Christian revelation.524

The translations, Tholuck hoped, could resonate with those searching for an alternatives to dry

Lutheran orthodoxy or “barren” philosophy. Sufism could offer the possibility for “awakening” a renewed Christianity of feeling. Tholuck further developed this idea, writing,

Already at the present, one notices in the oriental world, and it will become clearer, that when a living Christianity develops the spiritual power of the Orient, then we will see great developments in science, art and life that the Occident has never seen before.525

For Tholuck, like Diez and Hammer, the Orient, and specifically Sufism, held religious knowledge that could be harnessed as a source of renewal in war-torn Europe. Tholuck envisioned a reinvigorated Christianity freed from rationalism and empty laws as a powerful force for society that could promote societal advancements. Rather than looking backward into the past, Sufism was the future.

Conclusion

Only four months after Tholuck moved into Diez’s house, Diez died in Tholuck’s arms on the morning of Easter Monday, April 7, 1817. Tholuck describes how the sixty-six year old

524 “Ich für mein Theil wünsche, daß diese Auszüge die Frucht tragen mögen, träge flache Geister zu erregen und zu etwas Höherem hinzuführen als Hausmoral und Brauchverstand; die, welche auf dem Boden dürrer Metaphysik die Schraube ohne Ende drehen, nach Nahrung begierig zu machen; die, welche alle möglichen Annäherungen ans Christenthum haben, ohne den Kern zu besitzen, durch das Gewahrwerden daß sie mit tieferen Muhammadanern auf einer Stufe stehn, an ihrer Weisheit irre zu machen; endlich Solche zu beschämen, welche außer dem Reiche der christlichen Offenbarung an keine erziehende Gnade Gottes glauben wollen.”Ibid., 1.

525 “Schon gegenwärtig läßt sich dies in der orientalischen Welt bemerken , weit mehr aber würde es offenbar werden, wenn erst ein lebendiges Christenthum die geistigen Kräfte des Orientalen entfaltet hätte, dann würden wir in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Leben großartigere Erscheinungen erblicken. als sie je das Abendland erzeugt hat.” Ibid., 40.

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scholar awaited a “joyous reawakening.”526 Diez’s legacy of drawing upon Sufi texts to address the religious and political challenges of the post-Napoleonic German-speaking world lived on in

Tholuck, who viewed in Sufism an answer to the debilitated state of Protestant Christianity in the wake of the Enlightenment, which promoted rationalist approaches to the Bible and philosophical alternatives to religion. Diez and Tholuck both turned towards Sufi texts to support their belief in revelation and published translations with the goal of gaining converts to their views. Tholuck’s life highlights how the development of Sufi studies in the West coincided with the development of modern evangelical Christianity.

526 Königlich Privilegirte Berlinische Zeitung von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, April 12, 1815 qtd. in Balcke, “Neues über ‘Goethes orientalischen Berater’ Heinrich Friedrich von Diez,” 74.

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Conclusion

Heinrich von Diez lived through key defining moments in the foundation of the modern

German state: the Enlightenment, with its possibilities for a new state outside the realm of the

Church and monarchy, the French Revolution and the upset of the absolutist order, the

Napoleonic wars and the rise of German nationalism, and Prussian educational and administrative reforms that served as the basis for modern state administration. In his early years at the University of Halle and at the Prussian judiciary in Berlin, Diez envisioned a new type of state based on patriotic citizens, who cultivated morality through freemason lodges and served the monarch out of virtuous love of their community. However, like many thinkers of his era, the destruction of the monarchy in the French Revolution and the French invasions of the

German-speaking world shook his faith in the citizenry. Instead, he sought refuge in the absolutist order, which he reimagined based on a morally cultivated ruler and a focus on the

Bible.

Although Diez’s political views changed throughout his life, his philosophical outlook remained consistent. Namely, he had a lifelong commitment to Pyrrhonian skepticism, the idea that any knowledge is impossible to attain with certitude. This led him to support a form of illuminism, expressed through freemasonry in his early years and later articulated through a commitment to Biblical revelation. Throughout his life, he was interested in morality as the basis of a state, whether it was developed through the freemason lodge or embodied in a virtuous monarch who used the Bible as the basis of law. Diez, however, shifted his focus on the foundation of the state from citizens, who could form the basis of a successful state through moral cultivation, to the monarch himself, who could use his own virtue to rule his subjects based on techniques related to self-knowledge from texts imported from the Ottoman Empire.

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Diez’s life reveals three unexpected historical connections. The first is a link between

European diplomats and Sufi lodges in Istanbul. Diez developed a relationship with the Galata

Mevlevihanesi, possibly becoming initiated into the Mevlevi order and taking a dervish named

Tahir Bey with him to Berlin. Diez also imported hundreds of manuscripts from Istanbul to

Prussia, many of them related to tasawwuf, translating several of them and studying countless others. Habsburg diplomats similarly developed relationships to Sufi lodges in Istanbul. Valentin von Huszár, for example, was so familiar with Mevlevi rituals that he memorized them and recounted them to Abbé Stadler, who arranged them in musical notation. He also possibly developed a relationship with Bektashi lodges as well. Other Habsburg diplomats in Istanbul, including Joseph von Hammer and Vinzenz von Rosenzweig, collected and translated important texts related to tasawwuf in Istanbul. These texts later influenced thinkers such as Goethe, whose interest in Sufism was related to esoteric pursuits, and Tholuck, who formulated his contributions to evangelical Christian theology alongside his study of Sufi manuscripts in Diez’s collection. These unexpected connections between Sufism and German thought go beyond previous studies of German orientalism by demonstrating the material link between texts in

Istanbul, institutions such as Sufi lodges and European embassies, and published German translations.

The second is the depth of the relationship between orientalism and the contentious field of German politics in the Napoleonic era. The Napoleonic Wars were a defining moment in the formation of German nationalism and the beginning of the modern German state. German thinkers used orientalism, as described in the secondary literature on German orientalism and

India, to argue for their visions of a united German future. A similar process is evident in

Hammer’s work, including his rhyming translation of the Qur’an, which viewed the foundation

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of the early Muslim community around a leader (Muhammad) and the power of language

(evidenced by the Qur’an) as a model for a German nationalism, which could similarly unite around a strong leader (similar to Napoleon) and the German language. While Diez supported a reinvigoration of the absolutist order, Hammer envisioned a state built on nationalism. Both orientalists used their translations of works imported from the Ottoman Empire to argue for their point of view, which drew them into a bitter dispute.

Diez’s life also highlights the relationship between Christianity, orientalism, and the

Enlightenment. Whether he was supporting doctrines of illumination in his early years or

Biblical revelation in his later years, Diez engaged with religious thought to contribute to

Enlightenment debates. His translations also show how he employed texts related to Ottoman

Sufism to support his vision of a Christian future. Similarly, Tholuck was a pioneer in both the study of Sufism as a discipline and the rise of evangelical theology. The relationship between

Christianity and orientalism, particularly evangelism, is now only recently beginning to be understood. 527

Diez’s era was foundational for the history of modern philosophy. The hallmark of continental philosophy, which distinguishes it from classical philosophy, is a concern with temporality. 528 That is, continental philosophers such as Herder, Hegel, and eventually Marx, among others, sought to understand subjects in terms of their past, present, and future instead of through abstract and timeless concepts. Aware of their own temporal position on a bridge

527 See Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (London: Hurst & Company, 2014), 43-66.

528 John McCumber, Time and Philosophy: A History of Continental Thought (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 7.

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between what they simply called “old” and “new,” thinkers such as Diez and Hammer looked to

Sufism to forge competing paths to the future.

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